The Code Warrior
by YT1
Summary: Jack renders aid to an underground resistance group - one that uses information as a weapon. Please R&R! *FINISHED!*
1. Introduction and Acknowledgements

The Code Warrior

A _Samurai Jack_/_Snow Crash_ fanfic by YT

This story is based on Gennedy Tartakovsky's _Samurai Jack,_ which airs on Cartoon Network.  It also contains a number of parodied elements from Neal Stephenson's _Snow Crash,_ published by Bantam Books.  The lyrics in chapter two are from Mai Yamane's _The Real Folk Blues_, the song played in the closing credits of the weird and wonderful _Cowboy Bebop_ series.  There's also a thing or two lifted out of Ion Storm's _Deus Ex,_ which I have played way too many times.  I am using elements from these stories without permission but without any intention of making money off them, either – so please don't sue me.

This story is rated PG-13 for language, some intense violence, and a bit of innuendo.

This isn't exactly a crossover, because I didn't combine the worlds of _Samurai Jack_ and _Snow Crash._  That would be impossible, or at least it would be impossible to do well.  I parodied  (as in imitated, not poked fun at) certain elements of the cyberpunk novel _Snow Crash – _mostly the characters, a few passages and, to a certain degree, the style in which the novel was written; then I put those elements into Samurai Jack's world and wrote a story about it.  Why?  Because I wanted to write a piece in which two of my favorite fictional samurai met and teamed up with each other.  I hope you have as much fun reading this as I did writing it.

_Snow Crash_ characters are, in order of appearance: Hiro, Y.T., Juanita, Raven and Ng.  The Black Sun club is also from the novel.

And, with just a _little_ further ado, the story begins… 

**samurai** n. 

A hacker who hires out for legal cracking jobs, snooping for factions in corporate political fights, lawyers pursuing privacy-rights and First Amendment cases, and other parties with legitimate reasons to need an electronic locksmith.

--- from _The New Hacker's Dictionary_

http://www.eps.mcgill.ca/jargon/jargon.html


	2. One : Living by the Sword

~***~

_Long ago in a distant land, I, Aku, the shape-shifting master of darkness, unleashed an unspeakable evil.  But a foolish samurai warrior, wielding a magic sword, stepped forth to oppose me._

_"Before the final blow was struck, I tore open a portal in time, and flung him into the future, where my evil is law._

_"Now, the fool seeks to return to the past, and undo the future that is Aku._

~***~

            The Central Hub cannot decide whether it should bustle or just strangle itself on the spot.  Jack feels that it is certainly trying to strangle _him_ – in the two weeks since his arrival he has been subjected to various abuses, among them being hunted by the Imikandi and later being forced to spend nine days as a chicken, fighting in an underground arena to entertain persons of rather dubious character.  He will _never_ look at poultry the same way again.

            He had come to the city on the advice of a soothsayer, who had told him that he would find something important here.  All he has found thus far is trouble; therefore, he thinks that it would be best for him to leave as soon as possible.  To that end, he is making his way through the maze of sewers and maintenance tunnels below the streets, so as to avoid any bounty hunters or other hostiles prowling in the night-darkened city above.  He is carrying a small compass, which he checks every now and then to make sure he is on course – to the east, where the sewers dump their contents out into a great river that flows into the sea several miles away.

            Jack opens yet another maintenance door at the end of a narrow passage that branches of one of the larger sewer pipes.  On the other side he finds a high, wide tunnel, running along an east-west axis.  This one is not a sewer tunnel, but a route for trains – in the eerie illumination provided by the orange fluorescent lights along the walls (those that are still functioning, anyway), he can see a set of tracks running straight down the middle of the passage.  And judging by the thick layer of dust that covers the ground here, and the cobwebs that drape from the walls and ceiling, this tunnel has not seen use for many years and probably never will again.  Satisfied that there is nobody else in the tunnel, Jack steps out of the door and closes it after him, shutting out the sound of flowing water from the tunnel he has left behind.  He turns right to follow the tracks in an easterly direction.

            The tunnel is unnervingly quiet.  The only sounds are the faint buzzing of the fluorescent lights and the sound of his own sandals going _clok-clok-clok_ against the ground as he walks.  He brushes a cobweb out of his way with one hand, then wipes off the clingy gray of it on the wall beside him.  The walk is monotonous; however, since most of his life is anything but, the quiet sameness of the tunnel is something to be grateful for.

              But the silence did not last long.  He has not been traveling in the tunnel for more than five minutes when he hears the sound of gunshots in an adjacent tunnel.  He has his sword drawn before the gray-clad man bursts in through a door about fifty feet away from him.  The man is pursued by a black spider robot, which spits a burst of machine gun fire from the small turret mounted on its head.  The gray man is right in its path – he jerks as the bullets hit him, then falls to the tunnel floor.  By that time, Jack is already charging the robot.

            The thing turns to face the samurai and fires its gun, but Jack has already taken a great leap in order to avoid just such an attack.  He snaps the blade down as he pounces on the robot, slicing it neatly in half.  He steps away from the broken machine as oil begins to leak out of its guts, then goes to the side of the fallen man.

            The man is still alive, but he will not be for long – there are multiple bullet wounds in his chest and abdomen.  Jack turns him over so he is lying on his back and not his stomach, lifts his head, tries to make him as comfortable as possible before the inevitable end comes.

            "It's _you_," the man gasps, his eyes widening.  He coughs a few times, flecks of bloody foam appearing at the corners of his mouth.  "There is…something important…"

            Jack does not know what the man's last request might be, but he will fulfill it if he can.  "What is it?"

            With a pale, trembling hand, the man reaches into a pocket on his belt and withdraws a flat case of clear plastic it contains a silvery disc with a little hole in the middle.  "This," he rasps, "Take it."

            Jack does as he is bid, taking the strange object in his hand.  He can make out his own distorted reflection in the surface of the silver disc.  He looks at the man, whose eyes are starting to cloud over.

            "They need…what's on that disc…"  The man is gripped by another spasm of coughing.  "You must…bring…to the Black Sun…"

            Jack does not understand this and is about to ask for clarification, but with a final wheeze the gray man relaxes into the sleep of death.  Jack slips the disc into his sash, lays the man out gently on the floor and closes his eyes, which were frozen open at the moment when he gave up the ghost.  He crosses the man's arms over his chest and, because it is all he can do at this point, says a prayer over him.  When he finishes, he goes to the opposite side of the tunnel and takes the disc from his sash again.

            He holds it up to one of the fluorescent lights, turns it over and examines it carefully, but can find no clue as to why the man in gray had given up his life for such a thing.  But one thing is clear – Jack cannot leave the Central Hub just yet.  He could not save the nameless man, so he is bound by honor to fulfill his dying request.

            Jack must take this thing, whatever it may be, to the Black Sun.  Wherever _that_ may be.

~***~

            In the street above the tunnel, three scaly Saurian teenagers are examining a black hovercycle that has been parked near the curb.  Their leader, Gorph, is sitting in the seat – the bike doesn't belong to him, but if his friend Nort is successful in his attempts to hotwire it, that won't really matter anymore.

            "It's a marvelaceous one," Gorph observes, "A custom job, looks like."  He flexes his clawed hands on the handlebars.  "C'mon, Nort, hurry up!"

            Nort hisses at him.  "Don't rush me, man.  These things take time…"

            Slark, the third in the trio, bares his teeth at Nort.  "Quit yappin', keep workin'."  Nort turns back to his task with a grumble.

            And then, from behind them, a fourth voice speaks: "Get the hell away from my bike."  The voice is icy calm but filled with menace.

            As one, the three teenagers whip their heads around to face the speaker.  They can't see him very well, because he is standing just at the far edge of the pool of orange illumination cast by the adjacent streetlight.  But they can make out a few details – he's a tall, lean human, standing with his feet apart and his arms crossed.  And he's either very brave or very stupid, to threaten three Saurians that way.

            Gorph swings his leg over the bike seat as Nort rises.  The three of them extend their claws and stand shoulder to shoulder, between the man and the bike.  "It's _our_ ride now, dorfnorb.  Why don't you just skiddle off before something _bad_ happens to you?"

            The man does not take this advice.  Instead, he reaches up his hand to grip something over his shoulder.  Nort thinks at first that it's some kind of long rifle, but as he hears the hiss of steel, notices the man change position and the ribbon of steel flash into the nimbus of the streetlight, he realizes that it isn't.  It's a sword, a long, slightly curved one.  It doesn't look like much, though.  What is this guy trying to accomplish, anyway?

            "Fine," Gorph growls, "Have it your way."  He jerks his head, and he and his two comrades rush at the human with claws raised high.

            Something happens, something too quick for the three to perceive, but whatever it is it has changed the situation drastically.  The man has slit the fabric of the three delinquents' jackets down their respective fronts without so much as scratching the scales beneath, and he has the point of his sword at Gorph's throat.   Now that the four of them are frozen in tableau under the streetlight, Gorph can see the man clearly – he is dressed in black, with a now unoccupied sword scabbard strapped to his back and a smaller sword thrust through the front of his belt.  His black hair, glinting with copper streaks in the orange glare of the streetlight above, is bound up in a topknot.  His eyes, dark and almond-shaped, are narrowed with anger and irritation.

            "You're lucky that I'm not in a _really bad mood," the man says casually, "Or you'd be minus a head about now."_

            Gorph swallows nervously, acutely aware of the sharp metal point oh so close to his neck.  The man grins in a way that can only be described as carnivorous.  Then the grin fades as the man's eyes flick to the left, and he turns quickly, his sword flashing through the air.

            There is a _clink and Slark cries out, gripping his sliced hand, as the knife he had just drawn from his waistband falls to the concrete.  Gorph takes the opportunity to bolt for the nearest alley before the crazy human decides to cut his head off after all.  Nort follows him a few seconds later, while Slark darts off in another direction._

            Hiroaki Protagonist watches as the three would-be thieves scatter in fear, hears the sound of their running footsteps fade away into the distance.  He waits for a few more moments, just in case – then he shakes his head.

            "Punks," he mutters as he sheathes the katana in the scabbard on his back.


	3. Two : The Messenger

            Y.T. maneuvers her hoverboard out of a traffic tunnel, swerves around a large sedan, and descends toward the street below.  The building she's heading for is an obsidian pyramid, a very upscale and exclusive establishment – Y.T. knows a lot of people who would pay their life's savings for the privilege of spending five minutes in there, but she's been a regular for so long that it's no big deal to her anymore.

            There aren't a lot of people out in the street at this time of day, so she's able to touch down fairly close to the entrance.  She pulls her feet out of the control slippers, picks up her board and tucks it under her arm, then walks up to the doorway recessed into the building's surface.

            Set above the door is a matte black hemisphere about three feet in diameter; underneath it, in letters carved into the glossy surface, is the name of the place: THE BLACK SUN.

            Y.T. steps into the mid-size foyer that sits between the outer door and the club itself.  She waves to the bouncers and turns left, intending to head for the little side door into the little hallway that leads into the back of the club, but she stops mid-step.  Something weird is happening.  Curious, she decides to stay and scope out the situation.

            A person in a hooded gray-brown cloak is conversing with Gurudo, one of the bouncers.  No, he's _arguing_ with Gurudo, but in a very calm and cultured tone of voice.  "Please," he says, "I know this is irregular, but it is important that you allow me into your establishment."

            "It's important that I do my _job_, bub," Gurudo replies gruffly.  "You don't have a club membership card, or the password, and I don't know who you are.  So I can't let you in; rules are rules."  Gurudo crosses his arms and lifts his chin, conveying the message that that's the end of the whole subject.

            But the man in the cloak is persistent.  "I ask that you make an exception, just this once…"

            Gurudo laughs.  "You have any idea many times I've heard _that_ one?"

            Y.T. _does_ have some idea – she's seen it happen before.  Most people, at this point, either give up or start behaving really badly.  And if they choose the second option, Gurudo kicks them out on their asses.  She wonders what this guy is going to do.

            To her surprise, he doesn't do either.  Instead, he sighs and tries again.  "I was asked to deliver…"

            At the word "deliver" Y.T. jerks as if slapped, because _she's_ the one who makes all the small but important deliveries to this club.  And she was supposed to deliver something here today, but the man who was supposed to give her the package never showed up.  The possibility that these two events are related changes the whole situation, or at least her view of it.

            "Listen," Gurudo growls, "If you won't leave, I'm going to…"

            Y.T. decides to intervene at this point.  "Cool it, Gurudo," she says, walking up to the bouncer.  He and the cloaked man turn to look at her.  "I'll handle this."

            Gurudo looks at her quizzically for a moment, then nods.  Y.T. turns to the man in the cloak – he looks sort of familiar, but she isn't able to make out much of his face because of the hood – and beckons to him.  "C'mon.  Follow me."  She turns and heads for the small side door.  The man follows her – she can hear the sound of his wooden sandals on the floor.  When she reaches the side door, she takes a keycard out of one of the pockets in her coverall, swipes it through the appropriate slot, and waits for the green light to go on before turning the handle and pushing the door open.  She steps back into the small hallway beyond, holding the door open so the man can pass through.

            He doesn't, though.  Instead he stops at the threshold of the door, looks at Y.T., then peers into the hall as if considering the situation.

            She doesn't have the patience for this.  "Do you want to be let in or not?" she snaps, more nastily than she intended to.

            The man shoots her a startled look, then nods and steps over the threshold into the hall.  Y.T. closes the door behind them, then leads him along the hall to a wider corridor in the back of the club.  She takes him to the door of the conference room, then stops and turns to face him again.

            "Okay," she says, "What's all this about?"

            The man blinks at her uncomprehendingly.  "All this?"

            Y.T. heaves an exasperated sigh.  "Who are you, and what are you supposed to deliver?"

            The man looks around the corridor cautiously, then turns back to Y.T., lifting his hands to his hood.  He lowers it.

            After she gets over the initial shock, her first thought is: _No wonder he looked so familiar._  And her second thought: _This is so incredibly cool._  And her third: _He looks a lot handsomer in person than he does on the posters._  This last thought causes her to grin in a way that seems to make Jack – because she knows know that that's who he is – very uncomfotable.  And that only makes her grin wider.

            "Shit, man," she says, "If you'd just shown your face to Gurudo back there he would've let you in, no problem."

            Jack manages to regain his composure before replying.  "I could not have known that.  He might have raised an alarm instead."  He unbuttons the front of the cloak and removes it, revealing his white robe and the sword – _the_ sword – thrust through the sash around his waist.

            Y.T. shrugs.  "Yeah, I guess you're right."  She takes a moment to decide what she ought to say next.  "Nice to meet you, by the way.  My name's Y.T."  She holds out her hand for him to shake, but he bows instead.  She withdraws her hand, realizing that she should have expected him to do that.  "What _are_ you delivering, by the way?"

            Jack reaches a hand into the front of his robe and withdraws a clear plastic case containing an unmarked CD.  "This.  I do not know what it is."  Y.T. is surprised again – maybe _this_ is the thing she was supposed to pick up and deliver.

            She opens the conference room door.  "Okay.  Wait in here – I know someone who'll want to talk to you."

            Jack looks through the door at the room beyond, looks a little surprised for a few seconds – then he nods.  Then he steps up to the wall by the doorway, hangs his cloak on one of the hooks next to it, and carefully removes his shoes (_what's _that _about?_ Y.T. wonders) before he enters the conference room.

~***~

            "I'll be back in a few minutes," the strange girl tells him, before she shuts the door.  Jack takes a few moments to examine his surroundings.

            He can hear ambient music, probably the same thing playing in the club itself – it isn't like the cacophonous horror that he heard in the club he entered shortly after his arrival in this time.  In fact, he finds it rather soothing and pleasant.  Which is good, because it cancels out some of the uneasiness that he is feeling right now.

            This uneasiness is due in part to the decoration of the room.  The way in which it is decorated reminds him all too much of home.  The table in the center of the floor is long and low, surrounded by kneeling cushions, and there are painted landscape scrolls hanging from the walls.  The lights – for there are no windows – are made up to look like hanging _shoji_ lanterns.  There is a small black pyramid – the club in miniature – in the center of the table, and at the far end from where he is standing there is a little control panel discreetly recessed into the surface.  He wonders what they might be for, but he cannot even imagine a possible answer.

            There are four cushions lined up along each long side of the rectangular table – with a sigh, he goes to kneel on the one that is to the left of the table's head, where the control panel is located.  He places the plastic case with the silver disk on the table before him.  Then all he can do is wait for the strange girl – what kind of a name is "Y.T.?" – to come back with whoever it was that she wanted him to meet.

            The song playing in the background ends, and a new one begins.  This one has a nice rhythm to it, and Jack actually starts tapping his fingers on his knees in time to the beat.

            But when he first hears the lyrics…

_Aishiteta to nakeku niwa : __Too much time has passed by to__  
Amarinimo toki wa sugite shimatta : __lament that we were deeply in love__  
Mada kokoro no hokorobi wo : __The wind keeps blowing, while my heart__  
Iyasenu mama kaze ga fuiteru : __cannot heal all the tears in it_

            In the context, in the circumstances, the sound of his native tongue hits him like a slap in the face.  It makes everything even more bizarre than it was before.  He doesn't want to hear any more, but he resists the urge to put his hands over his ears.  Instead he tries to ignore the music, but it worms in through his senses and locks a death grip on his heart.

Hitotsu no mede asu wo mite : Watching tomorrow with one eye  
Hitotsu no mede kinou mitsumeteru : while keeping the other on yesterday  
Kimi no ai no yurikagode : If only I could peacefully sleep  
Mo ichido yasurakani nemuretara : in the cradle of your love, again

            He is startled when the door opens again.  Y.T. appears in the doorway, a smile on her face, and turns to speak to the person behind her.  "Just be prepared for a surprise."

Kawaita hitomi de dareka naite kure : Someone, cry for me with parched eyes 

            Y.T. walks into the room, followed by an older woman, perhaps in her mid-thirties.  She stops in her tracks when she catches sight of Jack, her dark eyes widening with surprise.  She is not quite beautiful, but she certainly is striking – her glossy black hair, flowing loose past her shoulders, frames a slightly tanned face with high cheekbones, a small nose, full lips and arched eyebrows.  Jack stands up from his cushion to bow a greeting to the woman.

The real folk blues  
Honto no kanashimi ga shiritai dake : I only want to know what true sadness is  
Doro no kawa ni tsukatta : Sitting in muddy water  
Jinsei mo waruku wa nai : isn't such a bad life  
Ichido kiri de owaru nara : if it ends after the first time

            "Jack, this is Juanita," Y.T. introduces them.  "Juanita, Jack."

            "I am honored to meet you," Jack says, trying to keep his composure in spite of the combination of melancholy and anxiety that is twisting his stomach into knots.  The woman smiles and returns his bow smoothly.

            "Welcome to the Black Sun.  I'm glad to meet you, too."  Juanita strides to the head of the table and takes a seat on the cushion there, as Y.T. plops down on the cushion across the table from Jack.  He kneels on the cushion again once the women are seated.

Kibouni michita zetsubou to : Despair filled with hope   
Wana ga shikakerareteru kono chansu : and this chance with a trap set  
Nani ga yokute warui no ka : What's right or wrong?  
Koin no omote to kura mitaita : It's like two sides of a coin

            Juanita's eyes go to the disc on the table.  "Y.T. told me that you brought this here," she says.  "Can you please tell me how you got it?  And how you found us?"

            Jack nods, trying not to let his feelings confuse him.  "The man who carried this was being pursued by one of Aku's robots," he says.  "I tried to help him, but the robot dealt him a mortal wound before I could destroy it.  He gave this to me and told me to bring it to the Black Sun."  He pushes the plastic case across the surface of the table to Juanita, who picks it up carefully.

Doredake ikireba iyasareru no darou : How long must I live till I'm healed… 

            "Excuse me," Juanita says, pressing one of the buttons on the tabletop console.  The music comes to an abrupt but merciful end.  "I couldn't concentrate," Juanita apologizes.

            "It is quite all right," Jack says, hoping that she cannot see his relief.  "I have a question to ask."

            "You want to know why this disc is so important," Juanita says, holding up the object in question.  Jack nods.  "Because," she tells him, "It's part of the weapon for our revolution."


	4. Three : The Underground Librarians

            Of course Jack has no idea what Juanita's talking about.  Y.T. wonders just how they're going to explain it to him, because stuff like this is probably _way_ out of his league.  But to Juanita it's almost as natural as breathing, so Y.T. will probably have to act as the translator here.

            "Please excuse my ignorance," Jack says, "But what is this revolution you speak of?  And how will that" – he nods at the disk in Juanita's hand – "make a weapon?"

            Juanita smiles.  "Which question do you want me to answer first?"

            Jack considers for a moment.  "My first question.  It will perhaps help me to understand the answer to the second."

            "Well," Juanita begins, folding her hands on the table, "The revolution is a fairly recent development, but it has roots in something much older.  When Aku was in the process of taking over the world, he tried to stamp out certain media – art, literature, religious texts, historical records – that he perceived as a threat to his authority.  He wasn't able to destroy all of these things, though, because there were always people who took it upon themselves to preserve those sources of knowledge.  They kept the stories, the myths, and the history, so that they would never be completely forgotten.  Usually these pieces of knowledge were passed down in families, or secret societies, from one generation to the next.

            "These people weren't organized into one cohesive group, at least not for the first few centuries of Aku's rule.  They were, after all, scattered all around the world, and any networks of communication that they between each didn't extend very far.  But as time went on and technology improved, the keepers of knowledge were able to communicate more easily with one another, and they started forming a sort of underground network, sharing the forbidden knowledge amongst themselves.  Now that network includes thousands of people all over the world.  I'm one of those people  – you'll get to meet some of the others later on.

            "Aside from guarding these relics of the old world, however, there wasn't much else we could do.  Open rebellion against Aku was pretty much out of the question, for obvious reasons.  A sort of passive resistance was the only possible way to fight back at all.  But that changed a little more than a year ago."  Here Juanita pauses and shoots a significant look at Jack.

            It takes him a moment, but he gets it.  "You mean…when I arrived here?"  Juanita nods.

            "Before you came, most people didn't even know that a world without Aku was possible – those who did had no hope of making the world that way again.  But now we do, so we're starting to do more than just keep old memories alive.  Which is what _this_ is about," she says, holding up the CD so that it flashes in the light.  "And that's the beginning of the answer to your second…"

            At that moment Y.T.'s cellphone rings, startling Jack and causing Juanita some small amount of irritation.  "Sorry," Y.T. tells them as she stands up.  "Be right back."  She takes the cellphone off her belt as she walks out of the conference room.

Once she has shut the door behind her she presses the phone's "talk" button, cutting it off in mid-ring, and lifts it to her ear.  "Y.T. here."

"_It's Hiro_.  _I got your message – what's this thing  that I just _have _to see?_"

Y.T. smiles to herself.  "It's a surprise.  You have to come over here and see it for yourself."  She can hear Hiro sighing exasperatedly on the other end of the line.

"_Look, Y.T., I'm not in the mood for…_"

"It's a _nice_ surprise," Y.T. assures him, wondering what the look on his face will be when he finds out just what it is.  "In the conference room at the club.  Trust me, you won't regret it."

There is a pause.  "_Okay.  If you say so.  I'll be there in a few minutes._"

"'Kay.  Seeya."  Y.T. presses the talk button again to end the call, puts the phone on her belt and goes back to the conference room.

Hiro's going to be in for a _big _surprise…

~***~

            "…but a robot's mind is still a computer.  It runs various strings of information and instructions according to what it gets from its input," Juanita explains.  So far, Jack is able to follow what she is saying, which is better than he expected.  "It's just that said input can come through sight, hearing and other senses similar to those of humans or the like."

            At this point, Y.T. opens the door and walks back in.  "That was Hiro.  He says he'll be here in a few minutes."  _Hiro_?  The name suggests that he is one of Jack's people.  And perhaps he was responsible for decorating the room in this way.  Jack finds himself feeling a lot more comfortable with this situation than he did before.

            But he becomes uneasy again when Y.T. sits down on his side of the table, instead of in her original place – not right next to him, but one space away, at the spot nearer to the table's foot.  The way she looks at him makes him very nervous, even though her attitude is not hostile.  The problem, he decides, is that he has only some small idea of what her intent actually _is_, and that small idea is enough to make him feel somewhat embarrassed.

            Fortunately, Juanita distracts him by continuing with her explanation.  "Since the sets of instructions they can follow are very complex and flexible as these things go, these robots can to a certain degree emulate living things – animals, at the very least, and some of them are pretty good at emulating humans.  But for all that, they're computers, and they think like computers, in a set of programs written in a certain language.  And that, really, is what the disc is for – it contains information on the language that the robots use to think."

            Now Jack understands why it is so important.  "And you can use such knowledge to your advantage?"

            "That's the idea, yes."

            Jack nods.  He is getting some idea of how this might work.  "How do you intend to do that?"

            "She intends to mess it up," Y.T. answers.  Jack turns to look at her.  The girl is leaning her elbow in the table.  "If she and Hiro know the code that makes the robots work, they can find a way to make the robots _not_ work.  See?"  And with that, the last piece of the puzzle falls into place.

            "Now I understand why one would be willing to die for it," Jack says.

            "I just hope they didn't figure out exactly what he stole."  Juanita puts the disc on the table and pushes it away from her.  "If they do, what we're planning might not work.  We've been preparing for months, and at this stage it's too late to abort."

            "Zero hour is in less than a week," Y.T. adds.  "Juanita and Hiro have to use the info on that disc to make a computer virus – a machine disease – and broadcast it at a certain time in order to shut down all of the robots."

            "Then all of the others who are in on the plan will go into action – destroying the facilities where the robots are built and maintained, cutting off government-controlled communications devices, and a number of other things.  A revolution on a truly massive scale," Juanita concludes.

            Something about this bothers Jack.  "But Aku will surely retaliate against such an attack!"

            Juanita closes her eyes.  "We know," she says softly.  "We know the risks we're taking, but we all agreed to do it.  People are going to die, but if the plan is successful they won't die in vain."  She opens her eyes again, and now they are burning with something intense.  "You're a great fighter, we all know, but even you can't do this alone.  With Aku's armies crippled you – and we – will have a better chance at getting rid of him.  But if we want it to happen, we have to make sacrifices."

            It is a truly selfless and courageous sentiment, and Jack feels overwhelmed by it.  He folds his hands on the table in front of him, looks down at them.  "Thank you," he says softly, though even he isn't quite sure why he felt the need to say it.  He lifts his head again.  "As you are doing this to help me, I feel that it is my duty to help you, in any way possible."

            "All _right!_" Y.T. exclaims triumphantly.  "Now we can really kick Aku's…"

            She is interrupted when the door opens again.  "All right, I'm here – what is it you wanted me to…"  The newcomer and Jack catch sight of each other.  "Whoa."

            Jack is just as dumbstruck as this new arrival.  He's not quite sure what to make of him.  The man is tall, lean, dressed in close-cut black clothes, with his dark hair in a topknot like Jack's.  His eyes and facial features bespeak an Asian ancestry, but the deep tan color of his complexion indicates that there is some African blood in him as well.

            But the strangest thing about him is that he is equipped with a _dai-sho_, a set of samurai swords – the katana in a scabbard on his back, and the shorter wakizashi in his belt.  Everything starts to feel surreal again, as it did when Jack first stepped into this room.

            He finally recovers himself enough to remember his manners, stands up and bows.  The other man snaps out of it and bows back.  When he straightens up, Jack can see that he is smiling.

            "I am honored to meet you, Jack," he says, in a tone that is miles away from the one he was speaking in when he opened the door.  "My name is Hiroaki Protagonist – you can call me Hiro."


	5. Four : Emergency Exit

            Hiro can tell that Y.T. got a real kick out of seeing his reaction to the "surprise" she told him about.  But because it was indeed a nice surprise – well, that's an understatement, really – he's willing to forgive her amusement at his expense.  Even if her not warning him about it made things a little more awkward than they could have been otherwise.

            But they've managed to get some of the awkwardness out of the way by now, and they're eating lunch at the conference room table.   Hiro finds it hard to believe that this is actually happening – he's always wanted to meet Jack, ever since he first heard about him, but he never imagined that he actually _would._  He has all these questions he wants to ask, but he can hardly work up the nerve to say more than a few words to the man.

            As for Jack, he talks to Juanita easily enough, and he seems to be getting more comfortable with Y.T. (she takes a little getting used to), but he's still in a state of mild shock as far as Hiro is concerned.  Or maybe he just doesn't know how to talk to him.  Or a combination of both.  For some time, neither man can bring himself to engage the other in conversation.

            Jack eventually breaks the ice.  "Hiro-san…I am curious about something," he begins.

            Hiro feels somewhat amused that Jack would address him with the honorific, especially since he's not using it with the women, but he's not very comfortable with it.  "Go ahead and ask – but please, just call me Hiro."

            Jack blinks at him a few times, then nods.  "My apologies.  But I wish to know, where did you acquire your swords?  I have not seen many others like mine since I came here."

             "I wish I could say that I inherited them but…" Hiro shrugs.  "A friend of mine made them for me several years ago."

            "Out of adamantium alloy," Y.T. supplies, "And sharpened with lasers.  Real cutting-edge technology," she remarks with a perfectly straight face.  Juanita chuckles softly.  Hiro just pretends he didn't hear it.

            From the look Jack gives him, Hiro knows what he's thinking – _Do you know how to _use _them_?  But that would be an incredibly insulting question to ask, so he doesn't.  "I see," is all he says.  He seems a little disappointed, but he can't be blamed for that.  Hiro feels somewhat sorry for him.

            "I'd like to see you have a duel or something," Y.T. suggests.  "That would be really…"

            She is interrupted by a shrill, repetitive beeping noise that startles everyone at the table.  Hiro recognizes the sound – someone is sending them an emergency communication.  Juanita presses the appropriate button on the table's control panel.  "Yes?"

            Gurudo's voice comes in over the intercom.  "_Boss, we have a_…"  There is a loud, unpleasant noise – and the connection goes dead.  Hiro's stomach twists itself into a knot as he and Juanita exchange glances.  Y.T. is already getting to her feet.  Hiro and Jack stand as well (the latter with his hand on his sword hilt), but Juanita presses some buttons on the control panel first to start the fire alarm; that will have the dual effect of confusing the PAB and warning everyone else in the club to get to a safe place, fast.  A klaxon begins to sound, and a calm female voice repeats the mantra "_Please make your way to the nearest emergency exit_" every few seconds.

            Y.T. gets her hoverboard from the corner of the room where she had put it down earlier, while Juanita pushes aside the large hanging scroll on the wall behind the head of the table.  She taps the section of wall in a complicated sequence and steps back as the foot-thick secret door swings open.  They follow her through it, then she uses the handle on the inside to swing it closed again.

            This room is about the same size as the conference room, but completely different in appearance.  The walls, floor and ceiling are plain undecorated black.  Blue-white fluorescent lights shine down on a collection of refrigerator-sized computer modules, each one displaying a set of small blinking lights.  On the wall to the right of the door is a keyboard, mouse and console setup that serves as the control center for all this circuitry, which contains nearly a terabyte worth of contraband data.  The alarm isn't sounding in here, which Hiro finds to be a great relief.

            Juanita heads to this control center as soon as the door is closed.  "That'll hold them for a few minutes," she says, "As long as they don't use explosives, which I don't think they will."  Then she sighs.  "I was hoping that we'd never have to do this."  She sits in the chair before the console and gets to work, executing the emergency programs that will send the electronic contents of the computer modules to other members of the resistance, then provide cover for the tracks of said transmissions.

            Jack looks at her with a confounded expression.  "But why in here?  There is no way out!"

            "Sure there is," Y.T. says, pointing at the floor beneath Jack's feet.  "You're standing on it."

            He looks down at a section of floor that seems no different from any of the others, then takes a few hasty steps backwards.  "You are certainly well-prepared," he says.

            Y.T. shrugs.  "We kind of have to be."  She looks at Jack's bare feet, then back up at his face with a sympathetic expression.  "You really should have left your shoes on."

            Jack narrows his eyes at her just a bit, then sighs.  "I shall have to do without for the time being, then."

            "Y.T.," Juanita says from her workstation, catching everyone's attention.  She turns in the chair to face them, then holds up the disc in one hand.  "You know where to take this.  Even if something happens to the rest of us…well, this has to get to the right people.  We're all counting on you."  She extends her arm – Y.T. goes up to her and takes the disc, then puts it under her arm with her board while she opens a mid-sized pocket on her belt.  She puts the disc in there, closes the satchel, then goes to the section of floor that Jack was standing on earlier.  She taps the floor in a certain pattern, and a trapdoor opens up.

            "See you guys later," she says as she climbs into the opening.  As if nothing were out of the ordinary.

            "Good luck," Hiro says.  Jack makes a small bow in her direction.  She waves at both of them, before descending into the floor.

            "There," Juanita says as she gets up from the chair.  "The files are sent and the memory is…"

            There is a loud _boom_ that shakes the door.  The PAB have found the secret room and are trying to break their way in.

            "We'd better get out of here," Juanita suggests, as the door is hit again.

            Hiro shakes his head.  "No, I'm not going.  Not yet, anyway – I'll hold them off, to buy you and Y.T. some extra time.  You'll need all you can get."  He looks at Jack.  "And you?"

            Jack answers the question by drawing his sword and taking up a position beside the door.  Hiro smiles at him, and is gratified to have the smile returned.

            Juanita taps him on the shoulder.  He turns to face her.  "Don't die, or I'll kill you," she warns him in a serious tone.

            "Yes ma'am," he says with a grin.  She smiles and kisses him, for a little longer than is really decent considering that they're not alone (though he doesn't really mind), then steps back and, with a final wave to each of them, heads down the trapdoor passage and closes it behind her.  Hiro draws his katana and sets up on the other side of the door, so that he and Jack are flanking it like matching statues, the tips of their swords nearly touching at floor level, feet shoulder width apart, one in front and one in back.

            Some of Hiro's initial anxiety following Gurudo's intercom message faded away during the past few minutes, but now it's back in full force.  He doesn't try to suppress it – instead, he distances himself from it, detaching his consciousness from his emotions, which is what he does when he gets nervous.  As he watches a shower of sparks appears in the lower left corner of the door, and the smell of scorched metal fills the air.  He and Jack look at each other.

            "I will take the first one," Jack says quietly, as the cloud of sparks works its way up the edge of the doorframe.  Hiro nods in agreement.

            They wait out the terrible minute and a half while the cluster of sparks works its way around the door.  It reaches the lower right corner, stays there for a few seconds, then goes out.  As one, Hiro and Jack lift their swords above their heads, ready to bring the blades down on whatever might come through.

            There is a short eternity of silence, during which Hiro can feel the sweat beading on his forehead: then the door is blasted out of the frame, followed by a hail of automatic gunfire.  Both Jack and Hiro shift backward a bit as the bullets make Swiss cheese out of the computer banks across from the doorway.  The shooting ceases, and the sound of the fire alarm assaults his ears again.

            A semiautomatic rifle barrel pokes through the door, followed shortly thereafter by the humanoid PAB enforcer robot that is holding it.  Jack snaps the blade of his katana downwards and slices its body in twain down to its mechanical hips.  He jerks his sword back up as the robot falls to the floor and another burst of gunfire, shorter than the last, erupts through the door in response.

            Then, a voice from the room outside: "We know you're in there," the voice shouts.  "There's no way out.  Surrender your weapons and come out with your hands up."  Obviously a PAB officer.

            By now, Hiro's gotten to the point where he's too worked up to be scared.  "Sorry to disappoint you," he shouts back, "But if you want to get us, you'll have to do it the hard way."

            "Fine with me," the officer calls out in return.  For a few seconds, nothing happens – then a fist-sized black-and-red object comes flying through the door at about chest height.

            Hiro's instincts come into play before his conscious mind can gear up.  He whips his katana down and around, hitting the small object in midair with the flat of the blade.  He hears the _clink_ of metal hitting metal as he sends the little thing heading back in the direction from whence it came.  He raises his sword again as he hears the object bouncing across the conference room floor.

            Hiro hears the officer in the room beyond excalim "Oh shi…" just before the grenade detonates, sending a loud _boom_ and a wave of light and heat through the doorway – Hiro is thankful for the secret room's sturdy walls.  He and Jack both shuffle backward a little as the explosion subsides.  Once it's over with, Hiro can barely make out the drill of the alarm and the crackling of flames in the room beyond for the pounding of his blood in his ears.

            After waiting for a few seconds, he cautiously leans around the edge of the doorframe.  The conference room has been wrecked beyond recognition by the blast (he's sad about that for a moment, but at least, he reflects, _he's_ not wrecked beyond recognition), and there are small fires and red-hot bits of metal scattered all around.  There are also bits of the PAB officer – Hiro turns away with a queasy stomach as he catches sight of one of them.  He can handle blood and guts, but this is up near the limit of his capacity.

            "_That_ was quite impressive."  Jack's voice startles him, and Hiro whips his gaze around to face the other man.  He's not quite sure how to interpret the expression on the samurai's face.

            "What?"

            Jack looks slightly amused.  "The way you deflected the grenade," he explains.

            Hiro blinks as he processes this statement.  "Oh…that…right…"  He manages to collect himself just enough to add "Thank you."

            Jack, with his sword at the ready, steps out through the door and into the conference room.  "I left my shoes in the hall," he explains, sounding a little embarrassed.  "I must retrieve them, if they are still there."  Hiro nods and follows him out of the room.  The two men step carefully over the debris created by the explosion and go out into the corridor.  Jack's shoes are still there, and he puts them on while Hiro checks around the corner at the far end of the corridor.  No sign of any more PABs or other threats.

            He jumps at a loud crashing noise behind him and whirls about to see a cloud of dust rising from the door of the conference room.  Once it clears, Hiro can see that the ceiling inside has collapsed and blocked the door.  Now there's no way back to the hidden exit.

~***~

            Jack is at first glad that they were not in the room when the ceiling came down, but his relief is quickly replaced by a sense of shame – had it not been for him, they would not now be separated from the trapdoor and a safe escape.  He turns to Hiro, who is looking understandably distressed, and makes a deep bow of apology.  "I am sorry…"

            Hiro shakes his head.  "No time to be sorry.  C'mon, we can take another way out."  He heads for one of the other doors off the corridor, and Jack follows him.  The two of them enter a large, dark storage room filled with stacked boxes and crates.  Although there is no obvious sign of any danger here, Hiro advances through the room cautiously, brandishing his sword.   Jack closes the door quietly behind them and follows the other man with his own sword ready, watching every shadow in case it should contain some threat.

            They reach the other end of the room, where there is a door with a push-bar and an "EXIT" sign over it.  Hiro pushes the bar with his left hand while holding his sword in his right.  A cool breeze wafts through the opening, bringing with it smells and sounds from the city outside.  Hiro sticks his head out the door and looks back and forth, checking for threats.  When he has satisfied himself that there are none, he beckons to Jack with his free hand and steps out the door.  The two of them step into a lot behind the club.  The door swings shut behind them, cutting off the noise of the fire alarm within.  After having gotten so used to it, Jack finds the absence of the sound to be very strange.

            "There," Hiro says, pointing at a black motorcycle sitting nearby.  He starts jogging for it, and Jack follows him.  "We'll have to ride double, but it's better than going on…"

            There is an ominous whistling noise.  Jack grabs Hiro's shoulder with his left hand and pulls him back quickly as a small rocket streaks through the air and hits the motorcycle, turning it into a pile of scrap metal.  He jerks Hiro into a small side alley as the PAB patrol car that fired the missile starts shooting at them with its mounted machine guns.

            Hiro's face is twisted into a snarl of rage.  "_K'sou!_"  He spits the curse so viciously that Jack actually flinches at the sound of it.  "That was my _bike_, you bastards!"  He moves to charge out of the alley – Jack decides that, though the man is obviously a formidable fighter, his self-control leaves something to be desired.  Jack grabs Hiro by the shirt to keep him from doing something foolish.

            "That would _not_ be advisable," he warns between gritted teeth.  Jack draws back his hand as Hiro turns around and glares at him.  But the glare fades after a few moments as the other man regains his calm.  Hiro sighs and nods, opens his mouth to say something; then they hear the sound of the PAB car's engine approaching.  Both of them take cover behind a nearby dumpster, crouching and pressing their backs to the wall, as the car hovers at the mouth of the alley and sweeps a spotlight over it to search for them.  Luckily, the alley is too narrow for the patrol car to enter.  After a few tense moments the spotlight is shut off, and the engine sound fades into the distance.  Jack peers around the edge of the dumpster to verify that the car is indeed gone.

            "He'll probably call reinforcements," Hiro says as he gets to his feet.  Jack does the same.  Both of them sheathe their swords – no point in keeping them out, now.  They make their way towards the far end of the alley, keeping to the shadows just in case.  Moving unseen once they get to the street beyond is going to be a problem.

            Jack sighs as he resigns himself to the prospect of making yet another harrowing escape.  He just hopes that this will be the last one for a while to come.


	6. Five : Birds of Prey

            Y.T. is having problems.

            She had escaped the Black Sun through the bolt hole in the floor, but she doesn't know how to get to her destination by way of the sewers/utility tunnels/whatever beneath the city, so after being lost in there for a while she came back to the surface through a handy manhole, hopped on her hoverboard and started making her way to the meeting place in the way that she does best.  But, as she has just found out, she is now on the PAB's Most-Wanted list, because the first cop car she passed started chasing her.  And it called in a bunch of others to help.

            She's managed to shake off most of them (or get them to crash into things), but the pilot of this particular car is a cut above the average, and he's been on her tail for the past five minutes.  She heads into a traffic tunnel against the flow of cars, ignoring the shouts, curses and beeping of horns that the angry drivers direct at her, and swerves into a narrow gap between a truck and a minivan, hoping that the cop won't be able to follow her.  But he's not giving up that easy – he tilts his car so it's at a right angle to the ground and zooms between the two vehicles, keeping pace with her.  _Shit_.

Y.T. swoops to the side wall of the tunnel.  A compact car swerves to avoid her and ends up in a fender-bender with a sedan.  The cop car grazes the compact as it follows her.  She ascends to the ceiling of the tunnel and crouches so as to fit in the space between it and the top of a garbage truck.  The smell makes her want to puke, but if that's what she has to do to shake the pursuit…

When she gets to the other side and takes a quick look behind her, she can't see the cop car anymore.  She feels a sense of relief as she exits the tunnel and peels away to the left, but a burst of machine gun fire – it misses her by a foot or less – tells her that the bastard is still in pursuit.  Y.T. starts weaving and swerving around so that she won't make an easy target for those guns.

There's a couple of closely spaced buildings nearby.  She zips between them – the walls are so close on either side that she could reach out and touch them, if she wanted to.  A quick peek behind her reveals that the car has stopped at the entrance to the gap.  It's too narrow even for this daredevil driver.

She breathes a sigh of relief as she exits the gap, but her heart jumps when she sees another PAB car not far away.  Thinking quickly, she zips behind an Aku-Cola billboard and hides in the forest of scaffolding by which it is mounted on the wall.  She listens for a nearby siren but doesn't hear it – the PAB car didn't see her.  Y.T. breathes a sigh of relief.  She'll stay here for a little while, maybe until the patrol car moves on, and then she'll go on her way.

"Well.  You _still_ have a thing for getting in trouble, I see."  The voice, placid, amused and familiar, chills Y.T. to the core and makes her heart try to do something it wasn't designed for.  She turns her head to the right to face the speaker, who is leaning out a window at the edge of the area covered by the billboard.  He is grinning at her – it could be considered a friendly grin, but she knows it isn't.

He's a big, broad-shouldered man, with lightly tanned skin, an angular face and long, straight, blue-black hair that moves slightly in the wind.  His eyes are hidden behind a pair of sleek sunglasses.  She thought – hoped – that she'd seen the last of him a year ago.  "I thought you were dead," she blurts.  His grin widens, and she backs the board a little farther away from the window.  She's considering the possibility of bolting, PAB or no, because she's more scared of this guy than she could ever be of the police.

The man doesn't respond to her remark.  "Don't worry, sweetie, I'm not after you – not at the moment, anyway."  He lowers his sunglasses a bit, and his brown eyes pin her like a deer in the glare of headlights.  "I'm after a certain sword-wielding bastard.  Not our mutual acquaintance, though."  By 'mutual acquaintance' she knows he means Hiro, and it takes her only a moment to figure out who he _is_ after.  She hopes he doesn't see the realization in her face.

He doesn't seem to, though.  He just looks at her for a few moments, making her skin crawl even more than it is already.  "Speaking of _that_ sword-wielding bastard…you're a messenger, and I have a message I want you to give him."

The way he says it is so condescending that anger obscures her fear for a moment.  "Fuck you," she responds.  Not particularly clever, but it gets the point across.

He just laughs at her like she's said something incredibly funny.  Then he stops suddenly, his face deadly serious.  "Tell him," he says, "that when I'm done with my other business, I'm going to settle the score with him."  The grin returns to his face.  "I just want to give him a head start."

Y.T. finally decides to leave and brave the PAB rather than spend another second talking to this psycho.  She breaks her gaze away from him, ascends into the air and weaves her way among the towering skyscrapers, toward the place where she will find her friends and, hopefully, safety.

~***~

            By the clock, it's been three quarters of an hour since Juanita reached Ng's hideout, but she feels like she's been pacing the floor of his office for years.  Y.T. should have gotten here before her, and of course she's worried about Hiro and Jack.  She shouldn't have just let them stay behind.

            "That won't do any good, you know," Ng tells her from behind his desk.  He drums the fingers of his left hand on the polished wooden surface, creating a rhythmic series of clicks.

            Ng is one of the most prominent figures in the resistance movement, and the biggest dealer in black-market technology on the continent.  He's a small, calm man of fifty-four, with neatly cut gray hair.  Several years ago he worked for Aku as a robot engineer, but that ended when the authorities found out that he was keeping a secret library of banned books.  He barely escaped with his life, and not in once piece – his fingers make clicking noises on the table because his left arm is a metal prosthetic, as are his right leg below the knee and his right eye.  The eye seems lifelike, if you don't look too closely, but his replacement limbs are obviously artificial.

            Juanita stops her pacing for a moment and turns to face Ng.  "Isn't there _any_ way for us to find them?"

            Ng shakes his head, leans back in his chair.  "I have been thinking about that myself, but I'm afraid the answer is no.  We will just have to wait."

            Juanita grits her teeth, crosses her arms and starts tapping her foot.  After a few moments she starts pacing again.  If only she'd taken the disc – at least then she and Ng would be able to start working on it by now, so she'd have something to take her mind off her anxiety.

            She is startled by the opening of the door; she turns to see Hiro walking in, followed by Jack.  She breathes a sigh of relief, runs up to Hiro and hugs him – he's a mess, covered with dirt and soot, but she doesn't care.  After a few seconds she pulls back (a little regretfully) and turns to address Jack.  "I'm glad to see that you two are all right," she tells them.  Jack responds with a little bow, and Hiro with a smile.

            "As am I," Ng says, getting up from behind his desk.  Juanita moves aside as he approaches Jack.  She's a little worried about how the samurai will deal with Ng, but he handles it gracefully, and the two men bow to each other.  "It is an honor to meet you at last," Ng says.  He introduces himself, then asks, "So, you have chosen to join us in our current venture?"

            Jack nods.  "I feel that I can do no less."  Then he looks around.  "Excuse me, but where is Y.T.?"  The relief that Juanita felt on seeing Hiro and Jack melts away like a snowball in hell.

            "She has not yet arrived," Ng informs him.  "But while she is quite adept at getting into trouble, she is even better at getting out of it.  I'm sure that she is fine."

            The door swings open again, and the object of their discussion walks in.  "Well," Hiro says happily, "Speak of the devil, and…"  Then he stops, probably because he has just noticed the expression on the girl's face.

            Y.T. makes a living out of pulling dangerous stunts, so there's not much in the world that can scare her.  But she's obviously scared now – her face is drained of color, and her eyes are very wide.

"What is it?  What happened?"  Juanita asks her in a calm voice.  She can't even imagine what it might be.

Y.T. closes her eyes and bites her lower lip before replying.  "Raven is after Jack," she tells them.  Although Juanita is standing three feet away from Hiro she can feel him tense up.  She goes to Y.T. and guides her gently to sit down in a nearby chair.  Juanita herself has never met Raven, but what she has heard about him has made her glad to miss the experience.  They all listen as Y.T. relates the circumstances and the dialogue of her meeting with him.

            "Who is this person?" Jack asks her when she's concluded.  "A bounty hunter?"

            Y.T. answers "A psychopath" as Hiro says "Sort of."  The two of them look at each other.  Y.T. waves dismissively, indicating that Hiro should answer this one.

            "We've had…dealings with him before," Hiro tells Jack.  "He's a mercenary, more or less, but he doesn't just fight for money.  I don't think he's after you for the googleplex on your head, either."

            Jack lowers his eyes thoughtfully.  "Then why does he seek me?"

            "For your reputation, I think," Hiro answers.  "He wants to try and kill you, just to see if he can do it.  That's the kind of person he is."

            "As I said, a total _psychopath_," Y.T. adds vehemently.

            "I suppose we will have to add him to our list of things to worry about," Ng says.  "But at the moment, we must deal with the central problem.  Do you have the disc?"  Y.T. nods, unbuttons the little pocket on her belt and hands the disc to Juanita.  She goes to join Hiro and Jack.

            "So much trouble, over so small an object," Jack says wonderingly.

            "It's not about the disc, though," Hiro reminds him.  "What's _on_ it – well, that's worth the trouble.  We just have to make good use of it.  Let's get to work."


	7. Six : Hints and Revelations

            Jack and Hiro have been at Ng's hideout for an hour, and for the past half of it the latter two have been working on the contents of the disc with Juanita.  Because he is unable to help them in this task, he is exploring the hideout instead.  It is part house, part storage warehouse, and part factory.  It is also completely underground – there are no windows to the outside world.  The door that he and Hiro came through, a cleverly concealed portal in an ostensibly abandoned smelting factory on the edge of the city, is locked to him, but under the circumstances it would not be prudent to go outside anyway.  There are a few other people in the hideout, some maids and butlers in the house and a few maintenance workers and engineers in the storage areas and assembly plants, but they seem either too nervous or too engrossed in their tasks to talk to him and Jack, for his part, does not really want to talk to them.  He needs time to adjust to the sheer strangeness of everything, and everyone, around him.

            There is a small library in the living part of Ng's base and, after he has explored the rest of it, Jack decides to return there.  Reading is one of the few things he can do to keep himself occupied at this point.  He finds the corridor on which it is situated and starts looking for the door.

            As he passes the archway that leads into the living room, however, he hears Y.T. call out "Hey there."  He stops in his tracks and turns to face her.

            She's sitting in an armchair almost directly across from the arch, removing what he recognizes as a pair of headphones from her ears.  Her hoverboard, close at hand as ever, is leaning against the side of the chair.  It, and she, look very much out of place in the elegantly decorated room.

            Jack is thinking of simply returning her greeting and continuing on to the library, but it does not seem like the right thing to do.  She, like him, has had a very traumatic day – probably more so for her – and has been left with nobody to talk to.  He knows he is not the best person to offer her companionship or conversation, but at the moment he is the only one available to do so.  In short, he feels sorry for her.

            With that conclusion, he steps into the room and bows.  She waves at a couch near her chair to indicate that he should sit down, so he moves to comply.  As he gets closer he can hear the faint, tinny sound of the music she was listening to on her headphones – he's glad that it's so faint, because it sounds absolutely cacophonous.  But as he sits down, she presses a switch on the small device to which the headphones are attached and the noise ceases.

            Y.T. shifts in her chair to face him.  "It's a pretty neat place, isn't it?" she asks.

            It takes a moment before Jack realizes that she is referring to the hideout.  "Yes, it is," is all he can say.

            "But it sucks beings stuck in here, no matter _how_ cool it is," she declares.  Jack simply nods in agreement.  Four hours ago he would have been shocked by such lack of decorum, but he has already gathered that Y.T. is never polite to anyone, even people she likes and respects.

            "Do you have any idea as to when the others will be finished working on their project?" Jack asks.

            Y.T.'s brow furrows as she thinks.  "Probably not for a couple of days, even if they work nonstop.  Which they probably will, or try to anyway."  She sighs.  "And until they're done, we'll just have to sit around and wait."  She puts her elbows on the arm of the chair and props her head in her hands.  "I _hate_ just waiting.  I wish I could go out."

            He hopes that she does not intend to act on that wish.  It would be imprudent, to say the least.  "Perhaps 'just waiting' will do us both some good," Jack tells her.  "We have had more than enough excitement today, and there will undoubtedly be more to come."

            She blinks a few times as she considers this.  "Yeah.  I guess you're right."  She lowers her eyes.

            Neither of them says anything for a few seconds.  Jack looks at her, trying to guess at her age – eighteen at the most, and probably not even that.  How had she gotten herself involved in this?  "When this is over," he finds himself asking, "What are you going to do?"

            Y.T. looks up again, startled.  "What do you mean, what am I going to do?"

            "Aku's minions know that you are working against him.  You will not be able to return to the life you had before, or to your family…"

            Y.T. makes a rude noise.  "I haven't had a family I could return to for a couple of years now."

            Jack blinks.  "I am sorry."

            She raises an eyebrow at him.  "For what?"

            "Because you lost your family."

            She glares.  "I didn't say I _lost_ them.  Just that I can't return to them.  It's _complicated._"  From Y.T.'s tone of voice, Jack gets the impression that he has touched on a delicate subject.  Then the glare fades.  "Sorry," she says, and looks at the floor.

            Jack feels that it would be a good idea to change topics.  His eyes fall on her hoverboard.  That should be a safe subject.  "I have seen people make use of these devices before," he remarks, pointing to the hoverboard, "And I am curious as to how they function.  Perhaps you could tell me?"

            Y.T. brightens up.  "Sure.  Actually, I could do better.  One of the storerooms here has a pretty high ceiling – I could give you flying lessons."  She grins, more than a little mischievously.

            Jack has to think about this offer for a few moments.  He _is_ actually curious as to how the hoverboard works, but that grin of hers…

            Then he realizes that he is letting himself be intimidated by a teenage girl, and his sense of pride takes over.  He stands up.  "Yes, thank you.  That sounds like an excellent idea."

~***~

            Hiro pinches the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger and closes his eyes, then opens them again, peering at the text on the screen before him.  Yet again, a solution fails to present itself.  But he's not discouraged.  Creativity and knowledge are important qualities in a hacker, but perhaps more important is a willingness to bang one's head against the wall for long periods in order to figure things out.

            "So our original plan isn't going to work," Juanita says.  "Just erasing their memory won't do any good, because they can just transmit clean code to them in a matter of minutes.  That won't do us any good."  She sighs.  "There just _has_ to be a way."

            "We must come up with a different approach to the problem, then," Ng responds, stating the obvious as he often does.  Hiro can't believe they're having this problem – a brilliant technical engineer, two first-class hackers and not a single idea among them.

            "'Scuse me."  The three of them whirl around at the sound of Y.T.'s voice from the office doorway.  "Do you guys have any idea what time it is?"

            "Six?" Hiro guesses.

            Y.T. shakes her head .  "Eight-thirty.  Geez.  Take a break and have some dinner or something."

            Hiro looks at Juanita, who shrugs.  "She's right.  Maybe we just need to clear our heads for a while."  She pats him on the shoulder.  "We'll work on this some more later."  She turns and walks for the door.  Ng does the same, but Hiro isn't quite ready yet – he scrolls through the text on the screen, hoping to catch something between the lines.

            Y.T. comes up and waves her hand in front of his face.  "Come on.  Don't make me drag you there."

            Hiro sighs, stands up and shuts off the monitor, then walks with Y.T. to the door.  "Well, we've had a fairly educational if unproductive few hours.  What have you been doing?"

            "Teaching Jack how to use a hoverboard," she says.

            He puts on an expression of mock horror.  "Uh-oh, we left you alone with him for all that time.  I hope you didn't…"  She grins slyly in response.  Hiro can feel the bottom drop out of his stomach – he was only teasing her, but he never thought that she would really… "Please tell me you didn't," he says weakly.

            She doubles over in a fit of laughter, and he realizes that she was just turning his joke around on him.  "You are _such_ a…"  He doesn't have the words to complete the sentence.

It takes her a little while to calm down.  "The look on your face was _priceless_!" she exclaims as she wipes the tears from her eyes.  "No, I didn't.  You really think that he'd _let_ me?"  She sighs, as if she wishes that he would, and they start walking again.

"I guess not," he says.  They drop the conversation as they enter the dining room, where Jack is sitting at the table (though he rises to greet them), as are Juanita and Ng.  Y.T. has obviously taken the liberty of getting dinner ready – or telling the right people to get dinner ready – because there is some bread and salad laid out on the table, as well as some place settings.  Hiro realizes that he actually _is_ hungry; like most people in his profession, he tends to forget food and sleep when he's working on a project.

He and Y.T. take their places at the table, and they start passing around the food.  Hiro can't keep his mind off the problem he's been working on, even though he really doesn't want to think about it at the moment.  He just _knows_ he's missing something, one of those things that's just too big and obvious to be immediately apparent.

"How are your efforts progressing?" Jack asks him.

Hiro sighs.  "Not the way we thought they would.  But there's a way to get around the problem.  We'll know it when we…"  For some reason, the phrase causes several things to click at once.  He stands up from the table.  "I've got an idea."

Y.T. glares at him.  "Don't even _think_ about it until _after_ dinner," she warns.  But he's already heading for the door, and Juanita is getting up to follow him.


	8. Seven : Countdown to Zero Hour

            Jack is still trying to figure out what has just happened.  Across the table, Y.T. slumps in her seat, shakes her head, puts her hand over her face and mutters "Techies."  That does not make things any clearer for him.

            "Err…perhaps we should try to bring them back?" he suggests cautiously.

            Y.T. removes her hand from her face and shakes her head again.  "It wouldn't work.  This I know from experience."  She runs her fingers through her blond hair, then sits up straight again.  "Well, if they want to work instead of eat, that's _their_ problem."  She savagely impales a slice of cucumber on her fork.

            Jack thinks of following the others so that he can find out just what Hiro's idea is, but it would be rather impolite – bordering on unkind - to leave Y.T. all alone at the table.  He decides that _he_, at least, will have the patience to wait until _after_ dinner.

~***~

            Y.T. is still pissed at them at breakfast the next morning, but what they accomplished on Hiro's burst of inspiration is worth all her bad temper.  Juanita is trying to explain that to both her and Jack.

            "I do not understand," Jack says.  "What is an IFF system?"

            "It's what the robots use to tell the difference between things they should attack and things they shouldn't," Juanita answers.  "With sentient beings the factors that go into the recognition of an enemy or ally are very complicated, but in most computer brains – at least, the kinds most of Aku's robots use – it's a lot more straightforward."

            Jack looks pensive for a moment.  "I think I understand.  How are you going to use this against them?"

            "We will make them recognize each other as enemies," Ng says.  "Then they will more or less do our work for us."

            "Well, not exactly," Hiro says.  "The real work will be giving them the suggestion.  So to speak.  The only way we can make it work is to broadcast it from a transmission tower in Central Military Command.  Three days from now I'm going to infiltrate the CMC, get to the tower and transmit the virus to the robots."  He smiles, a little bitterly.  "Easier said than done."

            Jack looks at him with an expression that Juanita can't quite figure out for a moment.  Then she realizes that it's one of admiration.  "You intend to do this alone?" he asks.

            Hiro shrugs.  "That's the plan.  But if you want to come along for the ride, you're more than welcome to."

            "I promised to aid your efforts in any way possible," Jack tells him.  "I will help you."  Hiro grins at him.

            "Then we will have to get you some equipment," Ng concludes.  "I mean no offense, but your current attire is not ideal for a stealth mission."  Jack nods in agreement.  "And perhaps you should have a sidearm as well."  At the word "sidearm," Hiro gets a very distressed look on his face and shakes his head; Jack looks at Ng with a stony glare.  Y.T. looks back and forth between Ng and Jack, not quite understanding what just went wrong.  Juanita, like Hiro, knows that Ng's suggestion was not a good one to make.

            "Thank you for your offer, but I will not carry a gun under _any_ circumstances," he says flatly.  The two of them just look each other in the eye for a few seconds.

            Ng backs down.  "If you insist," he says.  Y.T. looks at Hiro inquiringly, as if to ask what the problem is, but his only answer is to mouth the words _I'll tell you later_.

            Juanita knows why Jack objects to carrying a gun.  He considers it to be a coward's weapon.  It makes her worried, because Hiro has no qualms about using guns (though they aren't his weapon of choice), and she doesn't know how that difference in principles is going to affect Jack's opinion of him.  Maybe he'll choose Jack's good opinion over that little extra advantage in this case; that would be foolish, but she understands him well enough to know that he's considering the idea.

            They don't mention the incident again.  Instead, they discuss the specifics of the plan, which will be set in motion on Friday of that week at 10 p.m.  Juanita and Ng will start hacking the CMC's security grid in an attempt to disable the automated defense systems.  Since they don't have any way to monitor the target complex with sensors or satellite imaging (unfortunately), Y.T. is going to do the recon work, watching for anything major going in or out of the place.  An hour later, Jack and Hiro will climb over the wall surrounding the CMC.  Then they will have one hour to get into the robot control center and transmit the Backstab virus (as Juanita herself has named it).  If they don't manage it by midnight, the other resistance members involved in the plan will be unable to damage or destroy the other military installations around the world – in fact, they will die trying.  Timing is vital here.

            "Besides the guards and defense systems, we have one other thing to worry about," Hiro reminds them.

            "You mean Raven?" Y.T. says.  She's obviously been trying her best to forget about him, and the reminder makes her visibly anxious.

            Hiro nods.  "If he's on Aku's payroll, and Aku has some idea of what our plans are – though neither of those things is certain – he'll be there."

            "If he is, we will deal with him," Jack says.

            From the doubtful look on Y.T.'s face, and the way Hiro lowers his eyes, Juanita can tell that nobody shares his confidence.

~***~

            Hiro is looking through Ng's armory, getting together the equipment he'll need for the mission.  He browses over a rack of pistols – blasters, just out of prototype – and picks up one of them, hefting it to judge its weight.  The door slides open; he looks over his shoulder to see Juanita walking in.  She joins him by the weapons rack.

            "So you're taking a gun after all?" she says.  "I thought you might not want to."

            She knows him too well.  "You mean because Jack wouldn't approve?" he guesses, as he starts disassembling the gun to check that all its components are in working order.  "I thought about it.  But I have my priorities; succeeding in the mission and getting out alive, more or less in that order."  Having satisfied himself that the weapon is in good condition, he starts putting it back together again.  "And if this will give me a better chance of doing both, then I'm taking it.  He can disapprove of me all he wants, just as long as I'm still alive to enjoy it."  He slides the empty battery back into place with a grin.

            Juanita looks at him thoughtfully.  Then she puts a hand on his shoulder.  "Somehow I think the decision was a little more difficult than that," she says softly.  And, as usual, she is right.  Hiro's grin fades, he lowers his eyes, looks at the blaster in his hands.  "Well, I'm glad you chose practicality over pride."

            "You came in because you thought I wouldn't?" he asks.

            She smiles kindly.  "I _know_ you're smarter than that.  It would be more accurate to say that I had my doubts."

            He considers this for a moment.  "Maybe I'm not quite as smart as you think I am.  I don't see the difference."

            "I mean I wasn't sure whether you would or not, as opposed to just thinking that you wouldn't."  She pauses, then gives him a serious look.  "Promise that you won't change your mind and decide not to take it after all."

            It's his turn to smile.  "If you say so."

~***~

            "Another neat thing this board can do," Y.T. says to Jack, "Is this.  Just watch."  She presses a button on the small control panel on the rear of the board, and the bright blue-and-orange color scheme washes into black.  "And you can bet _that_ doesn't come standard."  She is obviously proud of it, but Jack is rather unnerved.  Such technology has that effect on him.  He just nods.

            Y.T. considers him for a few seconds.  "Can I ask you a question?  I mean, other than the one I just asked."

            He has to smile, just a little.  "Certainly."

            She pauses for a few moments more.  "Do you get nervous when you know there's a fight coming?  You don't have to answer if you don't want to."

            Jack knows very well that, despite her offer of that option, he can't actually take it.  If he does, she would know the answer anyway, or at least think that she did.  "Yes, somewhat.  It is unavoidable."

            Y.T. raises her eyebrows for a moment, but her response is "That's what I thought."  Then she looks down at her board.  "I don't know how people like you and Hiro do this stuff.  I get scared just thinking about it."  She looks up again.  "But don't _tell_ that to anybody."

            Jack is surprised to hear this.  She flies around on that board of hers for a living; obviously, she is not the type of person who scares easily.  "I will not tell.  You have my word."

She sighs.  "I don't know how I'm going to do this.  I'm just not that brave."

Jack thinks for a moment.  "My father told me that a lack of fear does not make one courageous; rather, it makes one overconfident and foolish.  Courage is doing what you must, despite your fear."  He hopes that it will help her a little.

She looks up at him again and smiles, but it's not exactly a happy smile.  "Thanks."

            Time can be strange.  The next three days were strange, for though they passed slowly while he was living them, he felt that they had gone by all too quickly once they were over.

            On Friday, at 9:45 P.M., Jack, Hiro and Y.T. got into a nondescript hovercraft that Ng had provided for the purpose of the mission.  The driver would take them as close as possible to the CMC, then drop them off.  They would then go their separate ways – Hiro and Jack to enter the base, and Y.T. to start flying around it.

            Jack glanced at Y.T., who was engaged in looking out the window.  Her coverall, like her board, was now black; it had, as she said, "some of the same stuff" in it that allowed it to change color.  He looked down at his own clothes, which for this mission were a close-fitting black coverall, fingerless gloves, and soft-soled boots.  He had tried on the outfit for the first time the previous afternoon, and though it was actually fairly comfortable it had taken him a while to get used to it.

            Besides his sword, which he was wearing on his back now instead of his belt, he had a small knife and a few other pieces of equipment such as lockpicks, some first-aid supplies, and flares. He was also wearing a small microphone-and-headphone set, as were the other two.  Hiro, however, was carrying most of the devices – he, after all, knew how to use them – as well as a gun.  Jack had chosen not to comment on that, or even to acknowledge it.  Even so, he was not artful enough to hide his feelings completely, and he was sure that Hiro knew about it.  But he had said nothing on the matter either.

            Jack has to keep reminding himself that Hiro had never claimed to be a samurai, and that in most cases he did not act like one.  That was not to say that he didn't have morals, or a sense of right and wrong, for he clearly did.  That much was obvious by now.  But the fact that he carried the swords without following the code…it made Jack a little disappointed.

            He tries to get the thoughts out of his head as the car descends.  "This is where we get off," Hiro tells them as they touch down in a lot behind some old buildings.  The doors open, and the three of them get out.  It is the first time in four days that they've been outside, but under the circumstances none of them can really feel enthusiastic about it.

"Meet you back here in two hours," Hiro tells the driver.  The man nods and presses a button to close the doors.  Then the car ascends into the air and flies off into the night.  He turns to face Jack and Y.T.  "Turn on your headsets," he says.  Jack reaches a hand to his hear and feels for the little switch there, then presses it.

            "Is it working?" Y.T. asks after activating hers.  Jack can hear her over the headset, so he nods.  Being able to hear her that way is all right when she's right in front of him, but he knows it will be unsettling once they are at some distance from each other.  But such qualms are nothing compared with what they are facing.

            "Everything's working so far," Hiro confirms.  "All right.  Let's get going."

Y.T. nods, puts her board on the ground and puts her feet in the control slippers.  They adjust automatically so as to fit snugly around her feet and keep her secured to the board's surface.  "Good luck," she says as she rises into the air.

"You too.  Be careful," Hiro replies.  Jack waves to her.  She waves back before zooming upward and away on her board and disappearing into the night.

The two of them look at each other.  Hiro nods, turns and heads for the edge of the lot.  Jack follows, keeping to the shadows.

Although what he is about to do is extremely dangerous and certainly unpleasant, he finds that, even so, he is looking forward to it. 


	9. Eight : The Fun Begins

            The CMC is a huge sprawl of black metal at the edge of the Hub.  When it was first built half a century ago it was only a third of its current size, but it grew along with Aku's war machine, and now it's an ugly mess of buildings and antennae and satellite dishes.  They're building yet another section on the west side of it.  The whole affair is surrounded by a high wall topped with a series of sensor relays, specifically for the purpose of keeping people like Hiro and Jack from climbing over them.  But Juanita and Ng should be able to take care of those.

            Except that they can't.  "_The external grid is on a different system,_" she tells him over the headset.  "_We've only got the inner defenses down._"

            Hiro grits his teeth in frustration.  "Can you hack this grid?"

            "_We can try, but it's going to take a while,_" Juanita informs him, "_And I'm not sure we have enough time._"

            Hiro looks at Jack, who is standing a few feet away from him, looking up at the top of the wall.  "So we can't get in without alerting the guards.  But if we have to do that…"

            "There is another way," Jack says quietly.

             "What?"  Hiro blinks at him.  "How?"

            Jack points downwards.  "I am standing on it."  He smiles.

            Hiro looks at the ground under Jack's feet, just as the samurai takes a step backwards.  There's a heavy metal grate there, about two feet on a side – an opening more than big enough for them to slip through, if they can get the thing loose.  "Damn.  You really know your stuff," is all he can say.

            "_Huh?  What's going on?_" Y.T.'s voice says in his ear.

            Hiro squats down by the grate and examines it.  It's got a bolt in each corner, and though they are somewhat rusty they haven't been welded in.  He'll be able to remove them.  "We found a sewer grate.  Looks like we're going to do some more urban spelunking," Hiro says.  He opens one of the pouches on his utility belt and withdraws a small vial of oil and an appropriately-sized screwdriver.  Jack takes the hint and looks through his equipment for similar items, then hunches down on the other side of the grate.  They each use some oil to get the rust off the bolts before they apply the screwdrivers to remove them.

            "_It will not be as well-guarded as the wall,_" Ng says, "_But there might still be sensors or other traps there.  Be cautious._"

            It takes only a few minutes of work to get the bolts out of the grate.  Hiro takes out his coil of nylon rope with attached collapsible grappling hook – what he was going to use to get over the wall – and instructs Jack to do the same.

            "I'm going to put the end of the hook in the opening at this corner.  You do the same in that corner, then press the catch to make the hook come open."  Jack nods, and both of them get their hooks secured in the grate.  Then they take up the ropes, get to their feet and go to the opposite side of the metal grille.  "I'm going to count to three," Hiro tells him, "And then we pull this open.  We have to be careful to set it down quietly, okay?  All right.  One…two…_three!_"

            Even with the two of them pulling on it, the grate is very heavy, and it takes all of their strength to keep from just dropping it on the pavement.  But they manage to set it down quietly.  Then they get the ropes and hooks off.  Unlike some of the sewer tunnels in the city, this one doesn't have lights in it, so they can't see down very far unaided.  Hiro takes a flashlight off his belt and aims it down into the opening, checking to see how far down it reaches.  The light beam reveals a river of sewage about twenty feet below.  Further investigation reveals that it is flowing down the middle of a wide tunnel which, fortunately, has walkways on either side of it.  If they use the ropes and swing it right they won't even get their feet wet.

            Jack is already attaching his grappling hook on the edge of the opening.  "I will go first."  Hiro nods as Jack passes the length of rope through a metal ring on his belt.  Once he has done that, he slides into the opening feet-first, then catches himself so that he is dangling about ten feet from the surface of the sewage.  Hiro angles the light so that he will be able to see, and swing to, one of the flanking walkways.  Jack lowers himself a little farther down, then starts to swing back and forth, moving a little farther from the center on each swing, until he gets his feet on one of the walkways, grabs a pipe running along the wall, and gets his balance.

            Now that he is secure, he takes the rope out of the metal loop, then gets a flashlight from his belt and turns it on as Hiro switches off his own and puts it away.  "I'm about to go down though the drain," Hiro informs Juanita and Y.T. over the headset.  "You might lose the signal for a little while, but I'll tell you when I get into the base."  Then Hiro waves to Jack, signaling that he is about to climb down himself.

Jack aims his flashlight beam so that Hiro can see his way down, but ends up shining it into his eyes by accident.  Hiro turns his eyes away and waves frantically at Jack, who gets the message and moves the flashlight.  Now Hiro can see the rope without being blinded.  He pulls it up out of the opening, being careful not to dislodge the hook, and passes the end through the ring on his own belt.  Then, with a little more hesitation than his partner before him, he slides into the hole, falls for a bit and manages to catch himself about fifteen feet down.  Not as neat as the way Jack pulled it off, but at least he hasn't landed in the sludge.  It smells really awful down here – he tries to ignore it.

            He starts swinging, and after a few oscillations gets close enough to Jack that the other man can catch his arm and pull him onto the walkway.  When he is secure, he takes the rope out of the belt ring, then shakes the rope until the hook comes loose from above.  As it falls, he does some quick pulling and swinging of the rope to keep it from falling into the sewage.  He succeeds in that, coils the cord and collapses the hook again before putting the whole thing back on his belt.

"We're in the sewer tunnel," he informs his allies over the headset, although he's not sure if it will work underground like this.  Then he gets out his own flashlight.  He and Jack walk down the tunnel in the direction of the CMC, sweeping the beams of their flashlights back and forth along the dark tunnel.

It's not long before they reach their first obstacle.  Hiro stops walking when he sees it – Jack comes to a halt behind him.  "What is it?" Jack asks.

"See these, on the walls?" Running up the wall, from just above the walkway to about head height, is a row of small metal rings.  There is another row of the things on the other side of the tunnel, matching up to the first.  "Laser emitters," Hiro says.  "Hold on."  He opens another pouch on his belt and pulls out a pair of goggles – special ones that can see light on several different wavelengths – and puts them on.  He presses a switch on the left side, and a series of numbers, superimposed on his vision in white text, leap into view.  He moves his finger to the small dial near the switch and adjusts it.  With a _click_ a series of red beams come into view, each connecting a laser emitter to its mate on the opposite wall.  "This must be part of the outer defense system," Hiro says.  "It's still on."  He shines his flashlight around, searching for an object that looks like a circuit box, something that contains the electronics for this thing.  While he's searching for that he finds a gun turret suspended from the ceiling not far down the tunnel.  Good thing he noticed the laser emitters.  He finds the circuit box a little later, but it's a long way down the tunnel from here.  So he can't deactivate the lasers that way.

But there's more than one way to skin this cat.  "I'll have to use an EMP charge," he says, "To short out the lasers.  That will take it down for about ten seconds."

"What is an EMP charge?" Jack asks.  Hiro forgot that Jack doesn't know this stuff.

"An Electro-Magnetic Pulse charge.  It shorts out sophisticated electronic equipment," he answers, even as he's getting one of the devices out of a pocket on his coverall.  He sets the timer on it to ten seconds.  "Let's move back from it.  We have some stuff that could get shorted by this thing."  Jack nods and starts moving back the way they came.  Hiro presses the "detonate" button and moves back.  When he and Jack are several yards away from the thing it goes off with a blue flash and a _zap_ noise.  Hiro gestures to Jack and starts jogging forward, to get through the disabled laser grid while it's still down.  Jack follows behind him.  About a second after they get through Hiro hears an electronic crackle.  He turns around to see that the laser grid is back in operation; they passed it just in time.  Hiro takes off the goggles – they're uncomfortable to wear for any length of time – and puts them back in his belt.  "Let's hope that's the last one we have to deal with," he says.  On their way through the tunnel, he makes sure to mess with the circuit box so that they won't have to worry about the lasers on the way out, if they exit this way.

A little ways beyond the circuit box they come to a metal door.  Hiro tries to open it – it's locked, but since there is a keyhole on this side that won't be a problem for long.  He opens a thigh pocket on his coverall and gets out a case of lockpicks.  Holding his flashlight in his teeth, he opens the case, selects a lockpick, and gets to work.  After about a minute the lock goes _click_.  Satisfied, Hiro removes the lockpick, puts it back in the case and returns the case to his pocket.  Then he switches off the flashlight and puts it on his belt.  He doesn't open the door immediately, though, since there might be someone or something nasty beyond.  Since the walkway is too narrow for him to handle his katana easily, he draws the wakizashi from the front of his belt, and holds it in his right hand while he opens the door with his left.

There's nobody waiting beyond it.  Nor is there a security camera – they must have thought that the laser grid and locked door would be enough to keep people out.  There is a set of stairs, lit by a dim, buzzing fluorescent tube (even the faint light hurts his eyes a bit, after the dark of the sewer tunnel), with another metal door at the top.  He sheathes his wakizashi, gestures to Jack and enters the door.  Jack follows, and is careful to close the door quietly behind him.  Hiro pads up the stairs and puts his ear to the other door at the top, listening for any potential threats on the other side.  He can hear humming machinery but nothing else, and decides that it's safe.  This one doesn't have a lock on it, since they aren't particularly worried about people reaching this stairwell from inside the CMC, so Hiro doesn't have to bother with the lockpicks this time.  He looks down at Jack, standing a few steps below him, and nods.  Then he reaches over his shoulder and draws his katana, which makes a metallic hiss as it slides out of the scabbard.

He gets into position facing sideways, his left foot on the uppermost step and his right two steps down.  He holds the katana so that it's pointing at the door, then grasps the door handle in his left hand, presses the latch with his thumb and pulls it open.

The room beyond contains pipes and valves and boilers, but no guards or other security that he can see.  He enters the door cautiously, eyes darting from side to side just in case something is hiding in the shadows.  After a few seconds he determines that the room is completely safe, so he turns around and nods to Jack, who is holding the door open at the top of the stairs.  He steps through the door and, as he did with the last one, closes it quietly.

"Can you hear me?  We're out of the sewers now," he says over the headset.

"_Gotcha_," Y.T.'s voice says.

"_Loud and clear_," from Juanita.

"Good," Hiro says.  Then he addresses Jack.  "Draw your sword and wait at the other door there, in case someone comes in.  I have to figure out where we are."

Jack nods and complies as Hiro sheathes his own sword, but once he's at the door he asks "How are you going to find our position?"

"With this thing," Hiro replies, taking a sensor device off his belt.  It looks like a bulky calculator, with extra buttons and a large screen.  But this interesting little device is actually one of Ng's best-selling items – a sophisticated scanner that has a range of up to fifty meters on open ground, and thirty through walls of rock or metal.  He activates it and sweeps it around, so that it can get a scan of the room as well as the ones adjacent to it.  It compares that scan to a map of the CMC stored in its memory, looking for a pattern of rooms that matches the data.  When it finds one, it shows him where he is, in square Z-14 of the map grid.  His position is indicated by a flashing red dot.  A white arrow indicates the direction of their objective the control tower.  With the press of a button, Hiro zooms out on the map view to get a more general idea of his location.  Once he's determined which way he should go next, he turns the thing off and puts it on his belt again, then goes to join Jack at the door.

There, he draws his own katana.  "We'll, here we go," he says gravely.  "Now the fun _really_ starts."

~***~

            Jack feels as if he is watching himself from somewhere far away.  His feet and hands move automatically, every noise seems muffled or distant, everything he sees is somehow at a remove from him.  Life has been so surreal since he picked up that disc a few days ago – how did he get from _there_ to _here_?

            Part of him wishes that the enemy would discover his and Hiro's presence here and raise the alarm.  This sneaking about like a ninja does not suit him – he would rather fight his way to his object than creep to it.  But if they _do_ have to fight their way through, they might not get there in time.  They have about an hour left, but he has no idea how close they are to their object.

            "This one," Hiro whispers, stopping at the door at the end of the corridor.  There's a keypad beside it, which means that it requires a number code.  Jack automatically moves to cover Hiro as he sheathes his katana and gets out one of his many special devices and sets to work breaking the lock.  Jack watches the doors along the corridor, and the opposite end of it.  He listens carefully for the sound of footsteps.

            In less than a minute, Hiro has broken the number lock.  As he steps back he puts the code-breaking device back on his belt and gets a palm-sized, inch-thick silver disk from a pocket on the thigh of his coverall.  "There's probably some people in there," he says, "So I need you to press this green button" – he points to said button, situated beneath the number pad for the door lock – "and I'll toss this thing in there.  Then when you hear a hissing noise, press it again."  Jack nods, moves to the control panel and puts his finger on the button.

            "One…two…_three!_" Jack presses the button and, as the door is sliding open, Hiro flicks the disc through it so that it skids across the floor.  He can see some of the room beyond; control panels and screens and, as his comrade predicted, a person sitting at one of the control panels – probably not the only one in the room, but from this angle he cannot tell for certain.  Nor can he tell determine the exact meaning of the expression on that person's face, because the face is equipped with three eyes and mandibles, but he guesses it to be puzzlement.  Then he hears a hissing noise from inside the room and presses the button on the door again.

            He looks over at Hiro, who is looking at a watch on his wrist.  After about thirty seconds he looks up again.  "We can go in now."  He draws his own katana as Jack presses the green button again, opening the door a second time.  Hiro goes in first, with his sword ready, but as it turns out there is no need for it.  The people in the room are in no condition to put up a fight or raise the alarm.  Jack catches sight of the silver disc in the middle of the floor – now it has little round holes in its sides, spaced at regular intervals.  He now has some idea of what that device is, and what the hissing noise was.

            "They are not dead, are they?"  Killing people in this manner, even if they _did_ work for Aku, did not appeal to his sense of morals.

            Hiro shakes his head, and Jack feels some sense of relief.  "They'll just be unconscious for a few hours," he says, sheathing his katana again.  "Watch the door for me, please," he says as he goes to one of the control panels farther down the room.  There is someone slumped in the chair in front of that panel – Hiro pushes him out of it and off to the side before taking his seat, stretching his fingers and getting to work on the keyboard.  The screens above the panel flash and change as the keys click, but Jack is both too far away and too ignorant in the subject to tell what they might indicate, or how they are related to whatever Hiro is doing.

            "I got it!" Hiro announces after a few moments.  Then he reaches into one of the coverall pockets and withdraws a disc not unlike the one Jack brought to him a few days ago.  He removes it from its plastic case and inserts it into a slot above the keyboard, then starts working again.  Then he leans back in the chair and grins.  "Message sent – the party's set to start at midnight."

            "_Great!_" Juanita congratulates them over the headset.  "_Now just cover your tracks and get out of there._"

            "Just a few more minutes," Hiro says to Jack.  This time the clicking of keys and flashing of screens lasts for five minutes.  With a mischevious smile and a sense of finality, Hiro presses a button next to the slot where he put the disc.  It is ejected again, and he puts it in his case and returns it to his pocket before standing up from the chair.  "If anyone gets here before midnight, they'll think we stole something instead of sending it," he tells Jack.  Jack refrains from asking how they could tell one way or the other; he is sure that he would not understand the answer at all.

            "Now for the best part," Hiro says jovially, "Getting the hell out of here."  Jack smiles, nods in his direction and presses the button by the door.

            When the portal slides open, it suddenly becomes obvious that getting out will not be as easy as they thought.  Jack ducks away from the open door, but the two guards have already seen him.  He hears shouting, and the sound of feet on a metal floor.  His eyes flick to Hiro in time to see him aim and fire his pistol.

            There is a strange noise as a burst of red light shoots from the muzzle of the gun, and then a cry of pain from the corridor outside.  Then another noise begins, a loud, wailing siren, and a rotating red light comes to life in the center of the ceiling above.  Hiro puts away his gun and draws his katana.  He does not say anything, but the glance he exchanges with Jack is enough to convey the message.

            Things have just become a lot more difficult.


	10. Nine : Murphy's Law

            "_What the fuck just happened?_"  Y.T.'s voice demands in Hiro's ear as he and Jack beat it out of the room and hang a right.  He doesn't know where they're going; he just hopes it's not straight into a bunch of guards.

            "I think you can guess," Hiro responds over the microphone.  Three guards come round the corner right in front of them.  Before they know what's hit them the first one has lost his head and the second has been impaled through the stomach.  As the mortal remains of the first two guards collapse to the floor the third one raises his rifle to fire, but doesn't have time to pull the trigger before Jack is barreling into him at full speed.  The guard's weapon spits a round of ammunition into the ceiling as he is knocked into the wall.  Before he can recover Jack hits him over the head with the pommel of his sword.  Hiro and Jack have taken off again before the guard finishes his unconscious slump to the floor.

            "We cannot stay in the halls," Jack warns in a relatively calm voice.  He's right.  If they just keep running around like this they're sure to find themselves trapped between two groups of gun-toting thugs and it doesn't take much imagination to figure out what'll happen next.

            Hiro doesn't have any kind of plan at this point, so he just picks a random door and slams the button beside it, then ducks through with Jack right behind.  He hits the button on the inside of the door to shut it again, then starts looking to see if there's a second door out of here or at least something to hide behind.

            It's a small office, currently unoccupied.  There's a desk, a chair, a filing cabinet and a potted plant – nothing to provide good cover.  But there's also a fairly large vent in the ceiling, right above the desk.  By the time Hiro has noticed it Jack is already standing on the desk.  There's no time for finesse, so he just hacks the vent cover off with his sword.  Once it has clattered to the desktop he sheathes his sword, reaches up, pulls himself into the vent and disappears.  Hiro sheathes his own sword and climbs onto the desk as Jack reappears and reaches out an arm to help him up.

As soon as they're both in Jack gets himself turned around again – no easy feat, but he manages it fairly quickly – and starts belly-crawling down the pipe.  Hiro follows suit, feeling very glad that he isn't claustrophobic.

There isn't much light here, except for the dim illumination that comes through the occasional vent.  This continues for several minutes until Hiro is in the process of crawling over a particular vent and he hears a door open in the room below it.  Jack hears it too, and they both freeze.  Hiro looks down through the slits in the vent and sees two guards right below him.  He tries to breathe as quietly as possible, but he can't do anything about his pounding heartbeat and he's certain that the sound will give him away…

"Any idea what this is about?" one of the guards says to the other.

His companion shrugs. "Dunno."

"I hope it's over soon," the first one remarks, "Our shift is supposed to be over soon.  I don't want to spend the whole night waiting in here."  That last statement just makes it a perfect _oh shit_ moment.  The edges of the vent slits are starting to dig into his arms.  Maybe he should just try and crawl anyway, just be really quiet about it and get off the vent and hope they don't hear it.  He doesn't want to stay here all night either.

            But he's not going to.  The vent cover, not designed to support the weight of an adult human for any length of time, creaks and shifts a bit under his weight.

            The two guards in the room below look upward.

            Jack and Hiro exchange a horrified glance.

            And then the vent cover gives way completely.

~***~

            After the initial crash and thump there is a moment of silence.  Then, as Jack is struggling to turn around in the confined space of the duct, he hears scuffling noises followed by the unmistakable sound of steel sliding out of a scabbard.  In his haste to change direction he gets stuck and can only struggle as he hears a cry of pain (it does not sound like Hiro's voice, though) followed by another cry that ends in a sick gurgle.  He finally manages to get himself facing in the right direction, scampers to the vent and peers down.

            His heart tries to leap out his throat when he sees that Hiro's clothes are covered in blood, but it quickly becomes obvious that the blood is not his.  He simply got sprayed with it when he sliced one of the guards' throats with his wakizashi.  Jack breathes a sigh of relief.  "Are you hurt?" he asks his comrade below.

            "I'm all right," Hiro assures him, though his voice sounds a little too calm.  Over the headset, Jack hears someone say "_Whew!_"  Most likely Y.T.

            Hiro wipes the blade of his wakizashi clean on one of the dead bodies, then uses it to cut the jacket off the other (this one he stabbed, so it's cleaner) before sheathing it again.  He uses the jacket in an attempt to get the worst of the blood off himself.  Jack finds this somewhat funny, though in a grisly kind of way.  When Hiro has gotten himself as clean as he can, he drops the improvised rag and looks up at Jack.  "Can you help me get back up there?" he asks.  Jack nods and moves back a little, sticking his arms out of the vent.  Hiro crouches, then leaps and catches Jack's arms so he can be pulled back into the duct.

            They continue to crawl as before, not really knowing where they are headed.  Jack's arms and shoulders are starting to hurt, and he is starting to see strange things flickering in the shadows.  The whole experience has a nightmarish feeling to it now, one of those nightmares in which you are lost and know that you will be lost forever.  Although he knows it to be foolish, Jack finds himself wondering if they will die here for lack of food or water, if their ghosts will haunt these ducts for all time…

            He is almost overjoyed when they come upon a break in the monotony – the duct ends in a square chamber with a large fan, slowly spinning, set in the middle of the floor.  There are lights set in the walls of this chamber, and as he climbs out of the duct and looks up he sees that it extends far above his head, to a lattice of metal set in the ceiling.  The breeze from the fan is somewhat refreshing, though it is coming from an odd direction.  Some loose strands of his hair dance like seaweed in the artificial wind.

            Jack moves aside so that Hiro will have room to get out of the duct.  Once he does he takes full advantage of the available space, stretching his arms above his head to relieve the strain on his muscles.  "Let's take a breather," he says.  "Maybe we can get our bearings."  Since they are unlikely to be found here for some time, Jack agrees with his suggestion and sits down with his back to the wall.  Hiro does the same as he gets the scanning device off his belt.

            "_Where are you now?_" Juanita asks over the headset.

            "In one of the exhaust chambers for the ventilation system.  I'm trying to find a way for us to get out," Hiro tells her.  After a few moments of working with the scanner he nods.  "Okay.  I've found a route for us.  It'll require some more crawling but at least we'll know where to go."  He heaves a sigh.  "Which is an improvement."

            "_Are you going to leave through the basement or…*crr*…the r*fzzzzt*…_"  Juanita's voice is erased by static.  It's not just Jack's own headset – Hiro is tapping his own frantically and looking very nervous.  Then he gives up, switches it off and removes it.  Jack does the same with his, since it is obvious that they are no longer functioning.

            "They must have put up a dampening field or something," Hiro mutters.  He closes his eyes, draws his knees up to his chin and rests his forehead in his left hand.  "_Fuck_," he growls despairingly as he smacks his right fist against the wall, then utters a wordless exclamation as the headset snaps apart at the impact and cuts his hand.  He glares at it for a moment with narrowed eyes, then tosses the broken device across the room, where it bounces to a stop on the floor on the other side of the fan.  Then he puts both hands over his face and sighs.

            Jack does not know what to do, or if he should indeed do anything.  All he can do is watch Hiro sit there in silence.  This behavior has him very worried – without his comrade, he will not be able to find his way around here, much less get out.  And even if he could, he would not want to see the other man break down.

            Hiro drops his hands, closes his eyes and leans his head back against the wall with a frustrated sigh.  "Tell me," he says in a very tired-sounding voice, "Are most of _your_ days like _this_?"

            The question is, as far as Jack is concerned, completely irrelevant to their situation, but it does not seem to be a rhetorical one and he thinks that it would be best to give an honest answer.  "More or less," he responds.  Hiro emits a short, bitter chuckle.

            "How the hell do you deal with it?" he asks.

            Jack takes a moment to frame his answer.  "I don't have any other choice."

            Hiro lifts his head and looks at Jack with a somewhat irritated expression.  "There's got to be more to it than that."  Jack shakes his head.  Hiro looks up at the ceiling again.  "_I _could never deal with it," he sighs.

            There are a few moments of silence, during which Jack tries desperately to think of something, anything, he can say in response.  He finally comes up with "I think you are underestimating yourself."  Hiro jerks in surprise and blinks at him a few times.  Then he smiles – a friendly smile that tells Jack he has said the right thing.

            "Listen," Hiro says, "We might not get out of this alive.  So…"  He pauses, searching for words.  "I always wanted to fight at your side, and I'm glad I got to – even if a lot of things went wrong and we both end up dead or worse."  He shrugs, and then says in a quieter voice, "And thank you for thinking better of me than I do of myself."  Hiro breaks eye contact and looks down at the floor.

            Jack is honored to receive the compliment, but he has no idea what to say to all this.  It seems that Hiro was not expecting an answer anyway,  for he stands up suddenly and says "C'mon. It's time to go."  Jack stands as well and follows Hiro into one of the other ducts that leads into the chamber.

            This time they do not simply take random turns as they did before.  Instead they head consistently downward, when there is a duct that slopes that way.  At a certain level they stop seeing vents below them – they are now appearing on the left side of the duct.  Eventually Hiro stops at one of them.  "This leads into the robot assembly plant," he says.  "There's nobody working in there at this time of night, and most of the guards are probably looking for us on the upper levels.  So we shouldn't have too much trouble getting out through the loading bays."  Hiro then draws his wakizashi and uses it to cut through the vent cover, around the edges.  Once he has that done, the two of them crawl out of it and into a cavernous room.  It is big enough to contain a small village, filled with huge machines, all eerily silent, and half-assembled robots and robot parts.  Jack would actually feel better if it was working instead of dormant.  For some reason, it puts him on edge.

            Hiro draws his katana as he turns right and moves in a running crouch.  Jack does the same.  He can see a huge door, covered by a steel shutter, at one end of the room – the way to the loading bay, probably.  It will be a relief to get out of here at last.

            But then something else goes wrong.  That something is a man in a long black coat who steps casually out from behind one of the machines and right into Hiro's path.  He is carrying a segmented metal staff about as long as he is tall, which is well over six feet.  Jack expects Hiro to just charge him and cut him down, but instead he screeches to a halt and drops into a defensive crouch.  Jack comes to a stop so as not to collide with his partner.  The big man drops into a defensive position himself, with his staff at the ready.

            Then he smiles, showing all his teeth in a brilliant, death's-head grin.  "Well, _this_ is a bit of a dilemma.  Which one of you should I kill first?"  He says it casually, maybe even cheerfully, and because of that his words send chills down Jack's spine.  In two sentences he has made it clear that he is a cold, cruel psychopath – which is how Jack recognizes him, though he has never met the man before.  Now he understands why Y.T. and Hiro are so afraid of him.

            "Jack, get out of here," Hiro says flatly through gritted teeth, not taking his eyes off Raven.  The latter looks Jack in the eye as if to say _Yes, run while you can._  But of course Jack is not going to do that.  He narrows his eyes and matches Raven stare for stare, making clear his refusal to run.  Now he finds the man's smile more infuriating than it is chilling.  What makes him so arrogant, when there are two opponents to match him?

            Jack does not really like having such questions answered, but tonight is one of those nights, so of course he gets an answer.  The bay doors at both ends of the factory roll open to admit a horde of beetle drones.  They spread into the room like a black-and-red plague, their legs clicking across the floor.  But they do not attack just yet.

            Raven has made his decision about who to kill first.  "Get the samurai.  Leave the rebel to me," he orders the robots.  Then he lunges at Hiro with his staff as the closest beetle bots stand up on their hind legs and rush at Jack with swinging scythes… 


	11. Ten : Sudden Reversals

            Jack has no choice but to leave Raven to Hiro, since he just acquired a plethora of his own problems.  At least, he reflects as he ducks a scythe, these robots do not have guns.  He slices the bot just above its legs and then reverses his grip on his sword so as to stab a robot that's trying to get him from behind.  After giving the sword a twist, just for good measure, he pulls it out, changes grip again and slices another robot diagonally in half.

            He has to find some place where he will have a tactical advantage over his opponents.  Staying in the middle of the floor, where they can surround him as they are doing now, would not be a good strategy for long-term, or even short-term, survival.  Well, there are plenty of tall machines here.  These drones are not good climbers, so that will give him some respite from their attack.  He spins around, scything down the nearest beetle bots, then "jumps good" to the top of a towering machine.  As he had predicted, the beetles are unable to climb after him, nor can they jump high enough to reach his perch.  Since there are no other immediate threats he takes the opportunity to see how his partner is dealing with his own difficulties.

            Hiro and Raven have moved somewhat from the spot where their clash originally began.  The beetle bots seem to be making an effort to keep away from them, so wherever they go they are always within a clear circle.  Hiro is not fighting the way Jack would in his situation; he is not really trying to attack his enemy.  Instead, he is fighting a defensive battle, avoiding Raven's attacks with deft economy of motion.  It looks as if he is trying to wear his opponent down, a prudent strategy since he cannot match Raven for strength.  The two of them seem to be evenly matched, at least with the strategies they are currently employing.  Jack tries to think of a way to help Hiro, but he is interrupted by a new problem.

            These beetle drones are marginally more intelligent than the ones he has encountered in the past.  Instead of trying to jump at him or scramble up to his perch, they are using a different strategy – some of them are trying to organize themselves into ramps so that their comrades can climb on top of them to get to Jack.  He starts slicing at the ones closest to the top, but they are forming multiple sets of stairs and he has trouble keeping up with them.  To make matters worse, most of the bugs that are not involved in the attack on his tower are doing the same thing at other towers, so he does not have the option of jumping to those.

            He draws in a hissing breath as he feels a scythe cut diagonally across his back.  With a loud cry he spins around and cuts the offending bot apart with an upward-curving slash, then ducks the scythe of the one behind him and swings around to cut its legs out from underneath it.  He lifts his sword just in time to parry the downward thrust of a third robot.  Jack realizes that he is completely surrounded, and that unless there is some kind of miracle, he will soon be dead.  And with the way his luck has been running tonight, he cannot count on a miracle.

            But, much to his surprise, he gets his miracle, although he does not recognize it as such on first sight.  The drones around him suddenly freeze up, becoming inanimate hunks of metal for a few seconds.  Now that the drones are not moving the room is filled with an oppressive silence, broken only by the sound of Hiro's sword and Raven's staff coming together, and a metallic scraping as one slides along the other.  Jack risks turning around so that he can see the two opponents with their weapons locked together.  Hiro is facing him at this point, so Jack can see him grin wickedly just a moment before the drones go haywire, possessed by the Backstab virus.

            The robots surrounding him suddenly start moving again, but this time they ignore Jack completely and start slashing at each other.  He stays low to avoid being hit by a stray swing of the scythe, rolls almost off the edge of the machine tower to avoid being crushed under a fallen robot, and takes a look around.  Even though the drones are made of metal and not flesh, the sight of them ripping each other to pieces is gruesome in the extreme.  It actually makes him feel a little nauseous.  Jack shuts his eyes and puts his hands over his ears, but he can still hear the sounds of the mechanical horde consuming itself.

            It lasts only about a minute or two, but it feels like forever before the noise fades away.  Jack opens his eyes and uncovers his ears, looks out at the spectacle of mechanical carnage.  He doesn't see Hiro or Raven, nor does he hear them.  Feeling slightly panicked, he stands up to get a better view – still no sign of them.  And he has no way to contact his allies.  Jack decides that it would be best to get out of here through the open bay doors, since searching for Hiro would be futile.  Perhaps they can meet up again outside.  He can think of no other options.  So he jumps from one piece of machinery to another, avoiding the floor that is slick with oil and strewn with drone parts, until he gets close to one of the bay doors.  Then he leaps to a clear spot on the floor, vaults over a fallen beetle bot, and runs out into the night, keeping an eye out for friends and enemies alike.

~***~

            The security system is up and running again, but its own IFF algorithms have been altered by the computer virus, so it's working to Hiro's advantage.  The guards are having too much trouble with it to think of messing with him, which is a good thing because he doesn't want to loose track of Raven.  He ran off after Backstab started working, since the robots classified him as an enemy, too.  Raven may be twisted, but he's not crazy enough to lack a sense of self-preservation.

            Hiro is not satisfied with the idea of just chasing him off and leaving it at that.  He wants to make sure the bastard is dead this time, because if he doesn't he's going to spend the rest of his life looking over his shoulder for him, and he would rather be killed fighting him now, when he's exhausted his capacity for fear, than live that way.  So he's tracking the person he so much wanted to avoid as late as a few hours ago, through corridors and stairwells and chambers all over the building.  Raven suffered a minor wound on the way out of the factory, courtesy of one of the beetle bots, so there's a blood trail for him to follow.  He hasn't seen any sign of Jack since starting on this chase, and just hopes that he's decided to get out of the base or stay where he is rather than search for Hiro.  He would probably get lost or trapped somewhere, since he doesn't have the know-how or equipment to navigate through here by himself.

            The trail ends at a smashed window on the end of a seventh-floor corridor – well, at least he thinks it's the seventh floor, he's sort of lost track.  Beyond it he can see the steel skeleton of what will eventually be the new section of the CMC, stark, jagged and cold in the illumination cast by the bulbs mounted on some of the girders.  Maybe Raven is trying to climb down to the ground that way.  Hiro sheathes his sword in favor of the blaster pistol, since the latter will probably be of more use to him in this situation, and climbs out the window, being careful to avoid the jagged edges of glass.

            He finds himself standing on a steel girder about three feet in width and nine floors up from ground level (higher than he thought).  There's a strong wind blowing up here, so he'll have to be careful, since it can interfere with both his sense of balance and his sense of hearing.  He moves cautiously along the girder, looking around for Raven or other hostiles.  The wind stings his eyes and they start to water – he blinks a few times to clear them.

            The soft noise he hears behind him is probably the only thing that keeps him from getting killed.  He turns in time to see the metallic flash of a flying knife, which hits him in the left arm close to the shoulder instead of the back as it was intended to do.  He grits his teeth at the flash of pain that follows and the fingers of his left hand go slack.  He turns completely to face Raven, who is now between him and the window – he must have climbed up and dropped back to the girder behind Hiro in order to catch him with a surprise attack.  He dodges backward just in time to avoid the swipe of the staff, but he's off-balance, and when Raven brings the end of the staff up again it knocks the pistol out of his hand.  The gun goes flying, glittering in the night for a few moments as it arcs upwards, then succumbs to gravity and falls to the ground.  By the time it has reached the high point of its arc Hiro has drawn his sword and dropped into a defensive crouch.  He tries to move his left arm so he can hold the sword two-handed, but the knife wound has effectively rendered that arm useless.  He can't block that staff one-handed, and the narrow girder is going to make dodging it a problem.

            Hiro ducks under a swipe of Raven's staff, then leaps to a girder down and to the left of him.  He starts running along it as his opponent jumps onto the girder behind him.  Unless he gets down to the ground, he doesn't have a chance.  Even then it's going to be a slim one.

~***~

            After the jamming field went up, Juanita told Y.T. to descend and lay low, so she's doing just that, waiting on top of a building not far from the CMC, where she can see without being seen.  And there's certainly been a lot of weird – and very unsettling – stuff to see over the past quarter hour.  Her observations confirm that Backstab is working, but other than that she can't tell what's going on.

            She sees a black figure zigzagging across the space between the building complex and the wall.  Judging from its behavior, it's either Hiro or Jack, though she can't tell which from this far away.  Y.T. watches nervously as he approaches closer and closer to the boundary, and jumps when someone starts shooting at him.  He starts running faster, then when he is within a few feet of the wall he leaps of the ground and somersaults right over it.  It's Jack, then.  He's the only person she knows who can jump like that.  "Jack just got out," she informs Juanita over the headset, "But I don't see Hiro."

            There's a pause of a few seconds before Juanita responds.  "_Go down and meet him._"  Her voice sounds very shaky, the way Y.T. feels.

            She does meet him, but not by flying down on her board as she was planning to.  After she waves to him from the roof of the building to get his attention he just jumps up to her, and doesn't even pause to catch his breath before asking "Where is Hiro?"

            Y.T.'s still rather surprised by that jump – forty feet, she has a hard time getting her mind around it - but she recovers quickly to answer.  "I don't know.  I haven't seen him."  Jack turns around to scan the CMC.  She notices a long laceration on his back.  "Are you okay?" she asks him.

            He looks over his shoulder at her as if surprised, then realizes what she's talking about.  "I am all right.  It is not as bad as it looks."  Then he looks at the complex again.  He has obviously caught sight of something – he's squinting in an effort to see it better.  Y.T. gets a pair of binoculars off her belt and hands it to him.  "Thank you," he says as he lifts them to his eyes.  He adjusts the focus a little, pauses for a few moments, then quickly hands them back to her.

            "What is it?" she asks.  "What'd you see?"

            He makes a quick bow in her direction.  "I am sorry, but I will need to borrow your board," he answers.

            Before she's managed to get over the confusion he is already putting his feet in the control slippers.  "Hey!  Are you nuts or something?  You barely know how to use…"  But he's already taken off in the direction of the CMC.

~***~

            Y.T.'s stream of vicious curses fades behind him as he heads for the forest of steel girders on the west side of the complex.  How did one make this thing go up again?  He presses down with the ball of his left foot in the forward control slipper and the board begins to ascend, but a lot faster than he intended to.  The disorientation caused by this sudden change in altitude makes him lose control for a moment, and he almost does a barrel roll.  He manages to stop his ascent and get himself straightened out.  Then he descends a bit by pressing downward with the ball of his right foot, more gently this time, and gets to the altitude he was aiming for.  The rest of the controls, as Y.T. told him, are all about balance and how you move your weight.

            Now that he has the knack of the board, he heads on a straight course for the construction site, where he saw Hiro and Raven through the binoculars.  But, as with so many other efforts he has undertaken tonight, it is not going to be that simple.  A hovercraft – not a PAB car, but some other type of military vehicle – rises directly in his path and turns to train its guns on him.  He goes into a dive just before the gunner inside pulls the trigger.  There are other, similar craft honing in on him.  Jack reaches over his shoulder, draws his sword and swoops back up beneath the first hovercraft.  He raises his sword and slashes it along its underbelly, then peels off to the right as it goes down.  He pulls up in front of another approaching craft and hacks off one of its mounted guns.  It turns to try and shoot him with the remaining gun, but he spins away from the stream of bullets.

            One of the other hovercars starts firing at him, and he jerks to the side to avoid being hit.  The car ends up hitting one of its comrades instead; smoke pours out of the damaged vehicle as it spins toward the ground.  Jack heads on a swerving course for the construction site, the two remaining cars on his tail, trying to shoot him down.  He ducks and darts in among the girders.  One of his pursuers manages to pull away in time.  The other does not, and it slams head-on into one of the vertical posts with a loud _boom._  Jack makes a U-turn, being careful to avoid hitting the girders as he does so, in order to take out the last craft.  It changes course to meet him as he emerges from the forest of metal, then opens up with its twin guns.  He pulls up quickly, but not quite quickly enough; one of the bullets hits the hoverboard, and it starts emitting acrid-smelling fumes.  He swoops down and uses his sword to tear a long, deep rent through the hood of the car, then pulls up again as it spirals into a crash.

            His own board gives out a moment later, starts jerking wildly, and then begins a rapid and dangerous descent towards the ground.  He tries to make it turn by leaning to the left, but it does not respond.  The control slippers tighten around his feet for a moment before loosening their grip completely.  Jack looks up to see the cable of a crane in front of him – the board is heading almost straight for it.  He sheathes his sword quickly and grabs the cable with his right hand as he passes it in his flight, then grips it with his left hand as his feet come out of the board's control slippers.  It continues on its erratic flight for a few moments before dying completely and falling more or less straight down.  Y.T. is going to be _very_ unhappy, but that is the least of his worries right now.

            He cannot use the cable to swing to the girders – it is too heavy.  It is also too far away for him to simply jump the distance.  He has to climb up to the top and go along the arm of the crane instead, which seems to take forever.  At last he makes it and drops onto one of the steel beams on the topmost part of the construction site.  From there he surveys the scene – Hiro and Raven are about thirty feet below him and on the other side of the site.  He draws his sword races toward them along the beams, leaping from one to the other, and lands neatly on the beam above the two combatants.  Now that he is this close he can see that Hiro is wounded, and that his strength is failing.  If Jack had taken a minute longer getting here…

            With a blow from his staff Raven sends Hiro flying backwards into an upright steel beam.  Hiro crumples into a heap, tries to get up, only to collapse again and nearly go over the edge.  Raven advances on him slowly, drawing back his staff so that he can swipe his enemy off the narrow beam and to his doom.  Jack drops onto the beam behind him; Raven hears the sound and turns as Jack is lashing out with his sword.  He brings up his staff to block Jack's weapon, and sparks come up at the contact between them.  Whatever the staff is made of – perhaps the same metal as Hiro's swords – Jack cannot slice through it.  Raven shoves with the staff, forcing Jack backwards a few steps, then brings one end around in a low swipe, trying to take his opponent's legs out from under him.  But Jack jumps over the staff, then ducks as Raven reverses direction to try and hit him in the head.  Jack lets his opponent push him back, bit by bit, trying to draw him away from Hiro.

            Then Raven does something unexpected: lashing out with a kick, he hooks his foot behind Jack's knee and makes him loose his balance.  He topples off the beam, barely manages to catch the next one and arrest his fall – and loses his sword in the process.  The sound of it hitting the ground far below is so faint as to be almost inaudible.  Jack pulls himself up onto the beam just as Raven drops onto same, with that sadistic grin on his face.

Jack glares in return and takes up a fighting stance.  If Raven thinks that he is helpless without his sword, he will find himself much mistaken.  Raven jabs the staff straight for his ribs, but Jack moves aside and throws a punch, catching his opponent in the jaw.  Then he grabs the staff and tries to yank it away while Raven is shocked from the blow.  But Raven twists around in a move too complicated for Jack to follow, and he finds himself being held against the other man's chest with the pressing against his neck, cutting off his air supply.  He reaches up and holds the staff, trying to force it away from his neck, but Raven is too strong for him.  No matter how much he thrashes and struggles he cannot get loose.  His lungs burn for lack of air, and the edges of his vision start to go fuzzy and dark.

But a burst of inspiration hits him – as it tends to in such situations – and he acts on it.  He lets go of the staff and swings his fist above his head, smashing Raven right in the nose.  The blow has the intended effect, stunning his enemy enough to allow Jack to push the staff away and dart out of reach, struggling to regain his breath.  He gets his balance and his wind back as Raven recovers from the blow.  His nose is broken and bleeding profusely, and he is no longer grinning – his teeth are bared in a snarl now, and though it is fearsome it is not nearly as chilling as his grin.

Jack, however, is not looking at his grin.  He has noticed something else above and behind Raven – Hiro is looking down from the beam above.  He has sheathed his katana and removed the bandolier to which the scabbard is attached, and he is holding it out so Jack can see it clearly.  Though he must be in a great deal of pain, he manages a conspiratorial smile; his intentions are clear.  Jack turns his eyes back to Raven, hoping that he did not notice that brief exchange, and waits until he rushes to the attack.  Offering silent thanks to the Shaolin monk who taught him this trick, Jack leaps over his head and does a neat twist in the air, so he lands facing Raven.  He backs up quickly, so he is under the spot where Hiro is lying across the beam.  Then he holds out his left hand and makes eye contact with his comrade.  Hiro obligingly drops the scabbard.  Jack catches it in his left hand and whips out the katana with his right just in time to block Raven's next attack.

This time Jack fights more aggressively, forcing Raven back along the length of the steel beam.   Raven manages to meet the sword with the staff on every attack, but just barely.  Finally Jack manages to get his opponent backed up against a post.  Jack makes a thrust with his borrowed sword, and this time Raven fails to block the attack.  He looks down at the blade, which Jack has just stuck into his heart, and then into the eyes of his opponent.  His expression is one of utter disbelief.  Then his hands go limp and he drops his staff, which rings against the steel girder before sliding off it and dropping to the faraway ground.  Its owner follows it a moment later, after Jack steps backwards and withdraws the sword.  He does not watch his defeated enemy fall, but he does hear the heavy sound of him hitting the earth, though only faintly.

He cannot clean the sword, so he simply sheathes it and buckles the scabbard to his back, to join his own empty one.  Then he jumps up and pulls himself onto the girder above.  He is relieved to see that Hiro is still conscious, and is in fact sitting up against the metal post.  Hiro smiles, though somewhat weakly, when Jack approaches him.  "How many do I owe you now?" he asks.  "I lost track."

Jack smiles at him.  "You do not owe me anything.  But _I_ owe Y.T. an apology."  There are some small medical supplies included in his equipment – he starts getting them out of his pockets and belt, so that he can do something about the wound in Hiro's arm.

"Yeah, she's gonna be _OW!_" Hiro exclaims as Jack pulls the knife out of his arm, more from surprise than from the pain.  Jack uses the knife to cut off the sleeve above the wound before applying some gauze and antiseptic packets to clean it.  Then he bandages it as well and as quickly as he can.  "You could have warned me that you were going to do that," Hiro remarks as Jack helps him to stand up.  Jack is about to apologize when he is blinded by a flash of bright light.  He doesn't think he can take any more of…

The light, as it turns out, is from the headlights of a hovercar, the one that brought them here.  It pulls up alongside the girder and the rear passenger door slides open.  Y.T. is sitting in the front passenger seat, leaning back so that she can see them through the open door.  She looks angry at first, probably because Jack's actions have resulted in the loss of her board, but the look turns to one of concern as Jack helps Hiro get into the car.  "Damn.  Are you all right?" she asks him.

"I will be," he says as Jack gets in after him.  The passenger door closes.  "We have to go down and get Jack's sword before we go," he says to the driver.  The driver nods and steers the car into a slow descent.  It takes a bit of searching, but they find Jack's sword and retrieve it.  They aren't bothered by any guards or other hostiles, which is a source of immense relief to all of them.

As they are en route to Ng's hideout, Jack reflects on the prophecy of the soothsayer that brought him to the Hub in the first place.  "You will find something of great importance."  Well, her prediction turned out to be true – and despite all he had to go through for it, it was worth finding.


	12. Epilogue : A New Destination

            The next two days were filled with reports concerning the effects of the Backstab virus.  Not only had most of the robots been destroyed, but the other resistance members who were working on the plan had managed to eliminate many of the military's assembly plants and other installations.  Jack feels better than he has in a month, not just because he will not be seeing many of Aku's robots for a while to come, but because he knows now that, while he has a great many enemies, he also has a great many allies.

            Once Hiro was recovered enough for them to make the trip, Ng arranged to have him, Jack, Juanita and Y.T. smuggled to another member of the resistance in a village some fifty miles from the Hub.  Jack is glad to be back in the fresh air and away from the city, although Y.T. seems to miss it a great deal.  Apparently she's never lived outside a city before, and she does not know any other way of life.  Jack feels pity for her, but he knows she will not appreciate the sentiment so he does not mention it.  She has forgiven him for the loss of her hoverboard and he does not want to risk rousing her temper again.

            Now that all has been settled, Jack has decided that it is time for him to move on.  Juanita has even provided him with a destination.  "You might want to head for Djar-mel-eb.  It's practically a byword for anyone seeking reputable magicians or wise men.  And not-so-reputable ones."  She smiles.  "You'll be sure to find someone who can help you there."

            "Look around for a guy named Mauri Fetreb too," Hiro suggests.  "He's one of us."

            "But above all, watch your back," Y.T. concludes.  "If half the stuff I've heard about that place is true…"

            "Most of it is," Juanita confirms.

            "Yeah.  Well, it's pretty crazy.  So just keep that in mind."

            Jack wonders how bad the place is, that it can be described as 'pretty crazy' by someone who has lived all her life in the Central Hub.  He decides not to ask.  "I will.  Thank you."

            "No prob," Y.T. assures him.

            "But before I go," Jack says, "I have one more question for you."

            "I bet I know what it is," Y.T. says, looking at him hopefully.  He nods at her, indicating that she should state her guess.  "You want to know what we're going to do now that we're…what's it again, _persona non grata _with the law.  Right.  Except it's more than one _persona_."

            He would not have said it in quite that fashion, but her guess was accurate.  "That is more or less what I was going to ask, yes."

            Hiro shakes his head.  "Don't worry about us.  We don't have any long-term plans yet, but we have connections.  We'll find something."  As far as Jack could tell, his confidence was genuine.

            "Then I wish you the best," he replies, and bows respectfully to them.  Hiro returns the bow, Juanita nods to him, and Y.T. waves.

            "And the same to you," Juanita says.  "Until we meet again."

            Jack does not know if they _will_ meet again – in fact, it is quite unlikely, and she knows it.  He feels some sadness at this, for it is not the first time that he has had to part with good friends.  His life, he sometimes thinks, is not just about his quest, but about leaving people behind so that he can follow it.  Though he has had to say his goodbyes many times, he has never gotten used to doing it.  But he does not say that.  It is not something that he says to anybody.  He simply departs on his way, and hopes that the three of them will find their own.

~The End~ 


End file.
